Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court [LWN.net]

June 25, 2014

This article was contributed by Adam Saunders

As LWN reported back in early April, the Supreme Court of the US (SCOTUS) has been looking at the patent-eligibility of software, through the lens of the case Alice Corp. v CLS Bank International. On June 19, the court released a unanimous ruling [PDF] throwing out Alice's patents. Its rationale for doing so will have a profound effect on patent litigation in the software industry.

To briefly review the dispute, Alice held patents on a method, system, and process for a particular type of financial risk hedging: namely, that one party to a set of financial transactions won't pay at one or more stages in the set. This risk is known as "settlement risk". Alice's patents describe using a computer to keep track of the transactions between the parties. If the computer determines that a party does not have sufficient funds to pay their obligations to the other side, then the transaction is blocked. The relevant patents are #5,970,479, #6,912,510, #7,149,720, and #7,725,375. Litigation started in 2007, eventually winding its way up to the Supreme Court.

Ruling

Writing for a unanimous court, Justice Thomas begins with a brief description of what the patents claimed. There are effectively three different types of claims made: "(1) the foregoing method for exchanging obligations (the method claims), (2) a computer system configured to carry out the method for exchanging obligations (the system claims), and (3) a computer-readable medium containing program code for performing the method of exchanging obligations (the media claims)" (page 3 of the ruling). Thomas goes on to describe the history of the litigation in this case, which was covered in our April article.

Thomas begins the rationale for the court's ruling by quoting §101 of the Patent Act: "Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title." He notes that the Supreme Court has held for a long time—most recently in its ruling last year in Myriad—that the text of §101 means that there are limitations on what can be patented, namely: "Laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas" (Myriad, quoted on page 5 of the Alice ruling). However, since every invention to some extent incorporates these patent-ineligible components, the fact that an invention relies in part on an abstract idea does not automatically render the whole invention patent-ineligible.

The ruling then goes on to cite the court's recent ruling in Mayo, which established a test to determine which inventions that incorporate abstract ideas are patent-eligible: "First, we determine whether the claims at issue are directed to one of those patent-ineligible concepts" (page 7). If it is so directed, then the court looks at "the elements of each claim both individually and 'as an ordered combination' to determine whether the additional elements 'transform the nature of the claim' into a patent-eligible application" (page 7). This is what Thomas refers to as "a search for an 'inventive concept'" (page 7).

The court then applies this "Mayo test" to Alice's patents. Beginning with the first step of the test, Thomas notes that these patents do incorporate, to a strong extent, an abstract concept, as "these claims are drawn to the abstract idea of intermediated settlement" (page 7). Thomas cites previous Supreme Court case law, emphasizing its ruling in Bilski (throwing out a patent on financial risk hedging), as illustrating examples of other patent-ineligible "inventions" that simply boil down to abstract ideas. Turning directly to Alice's patents, Thomas notes that intermediated settlement is an old financial idea: "Like the risk hedging in Bilski, the concept of intermediated settlement is 'a fundamental economic practice long prevalent in our system of commerce'" (page 9).

Thomas then applies the second step: looking at what else is in the patent claims, individually and in combination, to see if there's anything more to Alice's "invention". The method claims, which describe how the financial obligations will be exchanged, don't pass the court's test because they "merely require generic computer implementation" (page 10). In what might be the most important part of the ruling for determining where the Supreme Court draws the line for "computer-implemented inventions", Thomas is careful to stress that while some inventions involving computers may be patent-eligible, he notes that the mere fact that a computer is used as part of an "invention" is not on its own sufficient to turn an abstract idea into something eligible for a patent (pages 13-14):

There is no dispute that a computer is a tangible system [...] or that many computer-implemented claims are formally addressed to patent-eligible subject matter. But if that were the end of the §101 inquiry, an applicant could claim any principle of the physical or social sciences by reciting a computer system configured to implement the relevant concept. Such a result would make the determination of patent eligibility "depend simply on the draftsman's art" [...]

The remainder of the patents, which are the system and media claims, didn't hold up either. With regard to the system claims, Alice had claimed that there was a particular computer hardware configuration it used to implement the "invention". When the court looked at that configuration, it didn't find anything more than the components of a generic general-purpose computer. Since Alice had stated in an earlier brief that if its method claims fail, so do its media claims, the court threw out the media claims as well. Having demonstrated the court's rationale for invalidating Alice's patents, Thomas concludes the ruling by upholding the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's decision to throw out the patents.

Justice Sotomayor also gave a one-paragraph opinion concurring with the court, which was joined by Justice Ginsburg and Justice Breyer. In that opinion, Sotomayor notes that the three of them would completely throw out business methods as unpatentable.

Reactions

The reaction by individuals and organizations with a professional and/or political interest in US patent law has been strong and polarized. Gene Quinn, a pro-software-patent lawyer and blogger on ipwatchdog.com, was rather unhappy with the decision, depicting it as "intellectually bankrupt". He noted that this ruling will invalidate many types of software patents: "On first read I don’t see how any software patent claims written as method or systems claims can survive challenge." That's a strong assertion, but it doesn't really hold up. For instance, if such a software patent claim was really so novel that it couldn't be boiled down to implementing an abstract concept on a generic general-purpose computer, it might indeed stand up to litigation.

In a press release, the Free Software Foundation (FSF), unsurprisingly, expressed delight at the ruling, but was not completely satisfied. The FSF noted in the release that it continues to seek a clear and total ban on software patents through legislative change.

In an opinion article for SCOTUSblog, former Director of the US Patent and Trademark Office David Kappos lauds the decision, as he finds it tacitly endorses the patentability of software: "This week’s decision reaffirms that from the point of view of the patent system, software languages are no different from other vernaculars – they are a medium of expression that can be used to capture and convey ideas." Referencing Diehr, an earlier Supreme Court case upholding a patent on a machine for curing rubber that included a computer, Kappos emphasizes how the court's Mayo test draws a line based on inventiveness: "the difference [between patentable and unpatentable software] is the presence or absence of a definitive invention versus abstraction. Diehr’s new and useful process for curing rubber was held to be innately patentable — the fact that it happened to be manifest in a software language was tributary."

I found all three of those reactions to hold merit. The court's clear statement that a mere incorporation of a general-purpose computer is insufficient for an "invention" to be patentable will, as Quinn put it, "render many hundreds of thousands of software patents completely useless". However, the FSF and Kappos both pick up on the subtleties of the decision: the ruling does not outright abolish software patents, and even explicitly recognizes that certain computer-implemented "inventions" remain patentable.

While those working in the free and open source software world, which has been threatened and restricted by software patents, should celebrate, the ruling in Alice is not an outright victory for software patent abolitionists. There will likely be a flurry of cases challenging software patents, which will better define the boundary the court has set in this case. However, only legislative change, such as by adding language to the patent statute similar to that proposed by Richard Stallman ("developing, distributing, or running a program on generally used computing hardware does not constitute patent infringement") will lead to abolition.

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to post comments

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jun 26, 2014 9:02 UTC (Thu) by rvfh (guest, #31018) [Link] (1 responses)

Excellent article, thank you!

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jun 29, 2014 7:37 UTC (Sun) by thoeme (subscriber, #2871) [Link]

Indeed, a very good article, especially for non-US readers sharing a general interest into the software-patent-madness, but lacking the stamina to go through lengthy legalese.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jun 26, 2014 12:39 UTC (Thu) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (71 responses)

> "... the difference [between patentable and unpatentable software] is the presence or absence of a definitive invention versus abstraction"

I don't see how "invention" is the opposite of "abstraction". Can someone understand and explain what was meant?

AFAIK an invention is just something new and not obvious, whereas an abstraction is something that is not tangible.

Mathematicians' job (for instance) is to invent abstractions.

Things which are neither inventions nor abstractions are countless.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jun 26, 2014 14:29 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

I guess he is trying to make a distinction between something that is new versus something that is a re-hash of something old stated in a different way.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jun 26, 2014 17:53 UTC (Thu) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link] (69 responses)

I think the general idea is that abstract ideas are not patentable; a patent has to be somehow tangible. For a while now, people have tried to patent abstract ideas by saying the running them on a computer makes them into a tangible invention. This ruling says that approach doesn't work; adding a computer doesn't magically transform an abstract idea into a tangible one. But a software based invention might still be patentable if the underlying invention is sufficiently novel that it would be patentable without the computer. IOW, a general purpose computer is an implementation detail that doesn't affect the patentability of an invention.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jun 26, 2014 20:04 UTC (Thu) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link] (68 responses)

> For a while now, people have tried to patent abstract ideas by saying the running them on a computer makes them into a tangible invention. This ruling says that approach doesn't work...

Good so far.

> But a software based invention might still be patentable if...

Whatever happened to "abstract ideas are not patentable"? Are you perhaps referring to patents where the use of software is itself a mere implementation detail (like Diehr's rubber-curing patent)? If so, those were never considered software patents in the first place. Any software patent--that is, any patent which claimed software running on a general-purpose computer, as opposed to using software to implement part of a larger system or process--would be a patent on an abstract idea.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jun 27, 2014 3:38 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (67 responses)

This is the point where things get hard. It's hard to convince people who don't know software that it's really all just math, surely the really hard software things must include more than that!!

and the decision does not say "if you do this in software it can be patented", it's more that they don't rule out the possibility that something implemented in software could be patented.

In the recent series of cases, they have repeatedly expressed concern over any patent that would close off an entire field of endeavour (i.e. all ways to get the result) as opposed to just covering a specific invention (this way to get the result), so I'm not sure that there is a software patent that would pass their examination, but they are being careful to not rule that there is no possibility of a patent being valid.

Look at the business method patents, those are far easier for the layman to understand, and we have now progressed to the point where three of the Justices are willing to say that they believe that such patents should be eliminated as a complete category. That is a battle that will be won far sooner than the software patent battle (at least in court, it is possible for the legislators to explicitly block them, but as we see in the EU, that isn't always enough). But in the meantime, we should be able to keep nibbling away at the big "unknown" area of potentially valid software patents by continuing to show how each example isn't valid as they come up.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jun 27, 2014 15:08 UTC (Fri) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (66 responses)

> surely the really hard software things must include more than that!!

Unfortunately true for all the software that is unnecessarily hard to read; just substitute "really hard" with "crappy". Which leads us nicely to the topic of... software patents.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jun 29, 2014 2:23 UTC (Sun) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (65 responses)

I think I understand "... the difference [between patentable and unpatentable software] is the presence or absence of a definitive invention versus abstraction" and it has nothing to do with whether software or computers are involved.

Remember that half (or a third, depending on how you measure) of this decision is not about whether you can patent something that is realized through software running on a general purpose computer, but about whether business processes can be patented. The quoted text refers to the latter.

In a Patent I class, I don't recall talk about "abstraction," but I remember well from Day 1 the distinction between an idea and an invention (an invention being patentable and an idea not being so), and I think that's what the the quote is about. The distinction is that "an invention is an idea reduced to practice."

That means if you have the idea to pass current through a filament so it incandesces and use that to light a room, that's an idea, and you can't patent it. But if you go into the lab and figure out that you have to make the filament out of tungsten and place it in a glass globe full of argon, and then you can light a room with it, that's an invention, and you can patent it.

Another way to explain the difference is that an idea, or abstraction, is something that is inspired - it just comes to you, whereas invention is something you work at. Edison said "invention" is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, and I heard he spent hundreds of hours inventing the light bulb after he (along with plenty of other people) had the idea. I think when the court here says there has to be a threshold level of inventiveness for something to be patentable, it's saying there has to be perspiration.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jun 29, 2014 2:33 UTC (Sun) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (62 responses)

That way of thinking leads you to fall into one of the traps that the Federal Circuit is currently in "It was hard to create, so it must be patentable"

just because it took a lot of sweat to make it work doesn't mean that it can be patented

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jun 29, 2014 17:02 UTC (Sun) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (61 responses)

You're right that "It was hard to create, so it must be patentable" is too broad, but saying "everything in computing is just math" is similarly too broad, you're never going to convince people of that.

Consider for example compression algorithms like gzip. The mathematics of this is "an invertible function mapping a sequence of bytes to another a sequence of bytes". Some sequences will get shorter, some will get longer. And that it for the math side.

Now a real compression algorithm is going to try to make strings you see in real life shorter, and that has nothing to do with mathematics. That could be likened to taking an abstract idea, taking it into the lab and finding that invertible function that people actually want to use. And then there's also the requirement that it be efficient to implement, which is also nothing to do with math.

And MPEG compression is even more tricky, since it's not even invertible.

I agree that patents are the wrong tool for the job here, they're far too strong. But we're going to need better arguments than "it's just math".

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jun 29, 2014 20:23 UTC (Sun) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link] (60 responses)

> saying "everything in computing is just math" is similarly too broad, you're never going to convince people of that

Only because (as your own comment illustrates) people tend to understand neither the nature of software nor mathematics. It is a fact that all software is math; the Church–Turing thesis and the Curry-Howard Isomorphism both prove that beyond doubt, from two different points of view. Unfortunately, you pretty much have to be an expert in both abstract mathematics and computer science to fully understand the implications.

> Consider for example compression algorithms like gzip. ... Some sequences will get shorter, some will get longer. And that it for the math side. ... Now a real compression algorithm is going to try to make strings you see in
real life shorter, and that has nothing to do with mathematics.

Um, no. The math extends to making the strings consistently shorter when there are compressible patterns in the input. (Random input, of course, being uncompressible in accordance with the pigeonhold principle--something else you can learn from the math.)

> And then there's also the requirement that it be efficient to implement, which is also nothing to do with math.

Wrong again. Math has quite a bit to do with the efficiency of the implementation. Evaluation strategies correspond to systems of logic, and evaluation time maps to the number of steps required to complete the program's corresponding proof. Making a program more efficient is equivalent to simplifying the proof. And, of course, the fact that some formulas are more immediately useful than others for solving certain problems doesn't many them any less mathematical.

> And MPEG compression is even more tricky, since it's not even invertible.

It's not invertible because you throw away part of the data (applying a mathematical filter--not all formulas are invertible). If you look closely, MPEG compression is even more obviously mathematical in nature than a universal lossless compression scheme like LWZ. It consists of linear transformation, difference, DCT, filtering, and encoding stages, all of which are well-known mathematical concepts.

Software is math. No other argument is required.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jun 29, 2014 20:34 UTC (Sun) by ms-tg (subscriber, #89231) [Link] (30 responses)

Software is not *just* math. Software is also effects.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jun 29, 2014 21:16 UTC (Sun) by mgb (guest, #3226) [Link] (28 responses)

"Software is also effects."

That's hardware.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jun 30, 2014 13:00 UTC (Mon) by ms-tg (subscriber, #89231) [Link] (27 responses)

>> Software is also effects
>
> That's hardware.

Really? That would seem to define most software as hardware.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jun 30, 2014 17:38 UTC (Mon) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link] (26 responses)

>>> Software is also effects
>> That's hardware.
> Really? That would seem to define most software as hardware.

What do you mean by "effects"? We're taking it to mean physical changes in the real world, which are clearly a function of hardware. If you mean "side effects" like assigning to memory locations, reading input, and displaying output, those are also part of the math, though it may not be obvious if you've never worked in a pure functional programming language like Haskell.

A program is a pure mathematical function from a set of abstract inputs to a set of abstract outputs. This can be modeled as streams or continuations, or using monads as in Haskell. The inputs can include data from external systems (like a keyboard or disk) and the outputs can be routed to external systems as well (like a disk or monitor). Or it could all be a simulation. To the software, external I/O is all abstract; it's the hardware that turns abstract states into concrete, physical I/O, and vice-versa.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jun 30, 2014 18:18 UTC (Mon) by ms-tg (subscriber, #89231) [Link] (23 responses)

> What do you mean by "effects"?

The *operation* of anything to change state. So, for example, if one had a piece of hardware that emitted a vibration. And a software program that could caused it to emit certain patterns of vibrations which could, for example, kill cancer cells while leaving healthy cells. I would describe the vibration as an effect, but I would also describe the software as the causative agent of the effect.

> A program is a pure mathematical function from a set of
> abstract inputs to a set of abstract outputs

(Yes -- this is all fine -- I know enough Haskell and work in Scala)

> To the software, external I/O is all abstract

This understanding, I think, would render all complex machines unpatentable .

Let's imagine a discovery that a certain set of state changes in the material world, heretofore unknown, is extremely valuable. Please consider the example above, of certain vibrations in certain patterns, timed to physiological responses observed, being effective in killing cancer cells. But this is just an idea, and not reduced to practice, so not patentable.

Now let's imagine that I conceive of a machine which successfully reduces this idea to practice. It so happens, since the invention of software, that decomposing this problem into basic hardware units and software control on a general purpose computer is the most efficient and effective way to experiment to create the machine, and also a very efficient and effective way to construct and deliver the machine. But for the purposes of the desired observable effect (reducing idea to practice in order to kill cancer cells), the fact that complex behavior is delivered as software is immaterial to patentability of the machine, isn't it?

As I understand it, the goal of the patent system is to encourage the disclosure of *exactly* this type of discovery! By providing incentive to disclose in a protected fashion, multiple actors in industry can advance the state of art, and deliver faster improvement on this promising cancer treatment, ultimately benefiting society.

For that reason, perhaps the coordination of effects within one notional "machine", for the purposes of patenting, by reducing a complex abstract idea to practice, is the reason that "all software" is *not* considered to embody only abstract mathematical functions. Because it would be impossible to patent any complex machine invented in the computer age, if that were the perspective adopted, wouldn't it?

Instead, and I think equally intellectually consistently, we can say that software reduces mathematical functions to practice. In practice, the execution of these effects *cease* to be abstract. And as that is the heart of any complex machine, in the context of such a machine, they remain patentable?

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jun 30, 2014 20:59 UTC (Mon) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link] (22 responses)

>> What do you mean by "effects"?
> The *operation* of anything to change state. So, for example, if one had a piece of hardware that emitted a vibration. And a software program that could caused it to emit certain patterns of vibrations...

In that case, the effect is entirely due to the hardware. Software doesn't cause the hardware to emit vibrations; the hardware emits vibrations in accordance with software instructions. The instructions by themselves are passive; they don't *cause* anything. They just sit there in memory until the hardware acts on them. To draw an analogy, sheet music doesn't cause a singer to produce a particular note; the singer produces the note in accordance with the instructions. The cause is the singer, not the sheet music.

> But for the purposes of the desired observable effect (reducing idea to practice in order to kill cancer cells), the fact that complex behavior is delivered as software is immaterial to patentability of the machine, isn't it?

Indeed, the software would be immaterial. The patent would cover the delivery of particular vibrations to the cancer cells in response to specific physiological observations, regardless of how those vibrations were produced. In other words, this example is irrelevant to the question of software patents, since it wouldn't be a patent on the software, but rather a particular set of physical inputs intended to cause a particular physical change in a set of physical cancer cells. Much like Diehr's rubber-curing patent, in fact. If someone produced the same results with hard-wired analog circuits and no software, they would still be infringing on the patent. That same software, running on a general-purpose computer without the vibration-producing output device, would not infringe.

If this is your main concern, rest easy--eliminating software patents would have no effect on the patent-eligibility of physical devices or processes which merely happen to incorporate software in their implementation. The addition of software to something otherwise patent-eligible would not render it ineligible. The patent simply wouldn't cover equivalent software in other contexts. Of course, when the patent is all about the software (like a patent on an encryption or compression scheme) then there's nothing else left which qualifies; these are the kinds of patents which would be eliminated.

If you were hoping for a patent on the device (probably cobbled together from off-the-shelf parts in a fairly obvious way in accordance with their intended uses) you might be out of luck. However, this example is really about the process of killing cancer cells with timed vibrations, not the device which implements it.

> we can say that software reduces mathematical functions to practice

No, we can't, because software isn't a mathematical function reduced to practice. It is, itself, a mathematical function.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jun 30, 2014 22:32 UTC (Mon) by dashesy (guest, #74652) [Link] (19 responses)

Software is a language, had Shakespeare patented his works no one could speak English. Proper way to protect written text is copyright. The problem with compression or codec is not the patents really but the standards, whoever patents them also pushes them to standard or they become de-facto standard, without having any obvious merit. Who says H264 is better than VP6 when it comes to patents? it is only that the former got adopted earlier. This alone is a good test for eligibility, does it matter how a codec packs bits and bytes? no. Is it really advantageous to use CDMA vs GSM? no, but the former was pushed to standard in US. GSM is simpler and more wide-spread otherwise.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 2, 2014 21:28 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (18 responses)

Software is a language, had Shakespeare patented his works no one could speak English.

Um, no. Software is written in languages. Languages themselves are abstract concepts. You cannot point to a piece of software and say 'that is C': you can merely point to programs that accept C, or produce it, or analyze it.

I can't figure out what on earth patenting a play could even do, though I'm sure some smart and sufficiently unethical patent lawyer could figure it out: probably it would ban people from using those plots again, which is self-evidently ludicrous given that he pretty much entirely copied those plots from elsewhere himself. But I can't see any way in which it would prevent people from speaking English -- after all, his intended audience was already speaking English, and had been for hundreds of years.

There are lots of legitimate reasons to hate software patents. Surely you can come up with some better analogies.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 2, 2014 21:38 UTC (Wed) by dashesy (guest, #74652) [Link] (17 responses)

What I meant is that software is the Language to talk to computers, not any particular language (more the reason software is abstract). If computers get smart we might be able to program them using the Natural Language or the language of humans (NLP research already is getting very successful).
Also I chose Shakespear because according to the Wikipedia:

In Shakespeare's day, English grammar, spelling and pronunciation were less standardised than they are now,[166] and his use of language helped shape modern English

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 3, 2014 7:53 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (16 responses)

Also Shaksper's English is much closer to modern American English than it is to English itself, our variant having been heavily and further influenced by the French-fixated Victorian dictionary writers (hence words like "colour, theatre, metre).

By the way, did you know that apparently, if you collect all the known ways Shakespar spelt his name, he rarely used the same spelling twice?

Cheers,
Wol

Great Vowel Shift

Posted Jul 3, 2014 9:18 UTC (Thu) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (14 responses)

> our variant having been heavily and further influenced by the French-fixated Victorian dictionary writers (hence words like "colour, theatre, metre).

Mmmm, this is new to me... Are you implying that British English went through the following stages:

1. Original, French spelling
2. Great Vowel Shift
3. American-like spelling simplification
4. *Back* to French spellings because of some "further influence"?

Whatever the (Hi)story was, I like the following irony: British English is using not just more French spellings but even French words and sounds[*] than American English, even though the US won independence from Britain with the backing of France = Britain's arch enemy.

[*]
Words: autumn, courgette, aubergine, toilet, caravan, aluminium, reservation, ...
Sounds: zebra, garage,...
http://www.bg-map.com/us-uk.html
http://www.iloveenglandstudyabroad.com/british-vs-america...

Great Vowel Shift

Posted Jul 4, 2014 0:01 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (13 responses)

> 1. Original, French spelling
> 2. Great Vowel Shift
> 3. American-like spelling simplification
> 4. *Back* to French spellings because of some "further influence"?

What do you mean by "original French spelling"?

Modern English is a fusion of AngloSaxon, and Norman French. Probably pretty much achieved by 14 or 1500. I think by the time of King John, England had gone from being a province of the Normans to being their last remaining stronghold.

Never heard of the Great Vowel Shift.

Don't know anything about the American spelling simplification.

But the major English dictionary writers were heavily influenced by the French affectation current at the time, hence the codification of French spellings into official English. And the reason the Americans didn't follow suit is why should they? I believe it was about the time of the War of Independence or a bit later, and it was very much a London thing. But London being the centre of English Culture, it stuck.

> British English is using not just more French spellings but even French words and sounds[*] than American English

And what is "British English", pray? British (the language) is probably approximately modern Welsh, ie absolutely nothing to do with English. Actually, English isn't even the language of all of England if you want to be pedantic - as I like to put it, "the Saxons speak English, the Angles speak Scots, and the Scots speak Gaelic". Okay, English is now the dominant language in Britain, but it's actually the native language only from about the Tyne south down the East Coast. On the west coast they speak Breton/Cornish/Welsh, and in the north the sassenachs speak Scots.

Cheers,
Wol

Great Vowel Shift

Posted Jul 4, 2014 7:01 UTC (Fri) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (9 responses)

> What do you mean by "original French spelling"?

It's just the spelling you find in a French dictionary.

> Never heard of the Great Vowel Shift.

Ever heard about Google? :-) Like many other languages and unlike English, French has (usually) just one sound per vowel (and diphtong). Practically this means you can (almost) read French ALOUD correctly without understanding it. Unlike this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_orthography#.22Ough....

Conversely, this explains why a significant number of people have such a hard time spelling English.

As non native speakers we frequently correct the spelling of native speakers. This is because we learned the words in books whereas native speakers learnt it while speaking. Conversely, native speaker don't understand us the first time we try to read a "book" word aloud :-)

Reading French alound is not as simple and straight forward as German but much easier than English

> Don't know anything about the American spelling simplification.

It's "simplified" compared to British English because "center" for instance is written like it sounds in English and not like it sounds in French ("centre")

> And what is "British English", pray?

In the context of this discussion it's merely the variant of English vocabulary in use on the British Isles, including Ireland (where Irish is struggling), and more specifically the words and spelling which are different from American English. No need to over-interpret me.

Great Vowel Shift

Posted Jul 4, 2014 8:58 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (2 responses)

> As non native speakers we frequently correct the spelling of native speakers. This is because we learned the words in books whereas native speakers learnt it while speaking. Conversely, native speaker don't understand us the first time we try to read a "book" word aloud :-)
Hear, hear! I still have this problem after living in the US for more than 4 years.

From my experience - reading Italian or German aloud is easy, Russian is a little bit more complicated (you might sound over-correct but still perfectly understandable), Ukrainian is the simplest (you can actually transcribe unknown words correctly - try that in English). English is impossible, a couple more centuries and it risks to become as hieroglyphic as Chinese...

Great Vowel Shift

Posted Jul 4, 2014 15:37 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (1 responses)

Are there spelling contests (as in the US) in Ukraine? Russia? Italy?

Great Vowel Shift

Posted Jul 4, 2014 20:40 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

Not in Ukraine or Russia that I know off. There are language-knowledge competitions but they are focused on higher-level stuff.

Great Vowel Shift

Posted Jul 6, 2014 0:44 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (5 responses)

>> What do you mean by "original French spelling"?

>It's just the spelling you find in a French dictionary.

So you're telling me that you'll find English words like "cow" and "pig" in a French dictionary from about 1200AD?

Sorry, I know I'm being facetious, but the great majority of English words came from German roots, not French, so "original French spelling" is a weird one to me.

> > Never heard of the Great Vowel Shift.

> Ever heard about Google? :-) Like many other languages and unlike English, French has (usually) just one sound per vowel (and diphtong). Practically this means you can (almost) read French ALOUD correctly without understanding it.

Maybe I should have Googled it. But this *could* well be the era in which Norman French and Anglo-Saxon really gelled into what we now think of as English. I notice the wikipedia article says that Vowel Shifts are peculiar to *Germanic* languages ...

Oh - and while I'm unable to cite my sources, unfortunately, I have heard of a text-to-speech program that reads English text. When given TRUE ENGLISH words, it only needs about 30 rules to handle a vocabulary of 50- to 70-thousand words. (In contrast, the average well-spoken person uses a typical vocabulary of about 25,000 words.) The problems that most foreigners have with English words is that those words are NOT ENGLISH! Would you like a cup o' char? That last word is Asian, and there are an awful lot of words in regular English that are poorly assimilated foreign immigrants.

> As non native speakers we frequently correct the spelling of native speakers. This is because we learned the words in books whereas native speakers learnt it while speaking.

What a marvellous comment on the excellent status of our education system. NOT! I have to admit that I learnt pretty much ALL my English grammar and spelling from studying foreign languages, in particular Latin. So I'm forced to agree with you. Most English people can't spell ...

> > Don't know anything about the American spelling simplification.

> It's "simplified" compared to British English because "center" for instance is written like it sounds in English and not like it sounds in French ("centre")

Except that "simplification" implies that something was done to make American spelling simpler. It wasn't. In the 1700s (when America and Britain parted company) we spelt it "center" in Britain too. It was only in the 1800s that Britain changed to French spellings. The Americans (sensibly) never followed our lead. It was the London-based dictionary writers who pushed English to use French spellings.

> it's merely the variant of English vocabulary in use on the British Isles ... No need to over-interpret me.

Except that "the variant" implies that "British English" is a homogenous whole. Try telling that to a Sassenach, Scouser or Geordie! Even going to visit my daughter in Yorkshire we sometimes have trouble understanding the people there because they have a *different* *vocabulary* to us southerners.

And while I'm almost certainly more easily offended than most, as someone who speaks English I object strongly to being labelled "British", just like you get a fair few Canadians and Mexicans who object to being lumped in with USAians just because they are "Americans".

Cheers,
Wol

Great Vowel Shift

Posted Jul 6, 2014 7:57 UTC (Sun) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (1 responses)

> Sorry, I know I'm being facetious, but the great majority of English words came from German roots, not French, so "original French spelling" is a weird one to me.

Glad you realize that different English words may have different origins.

> When given TRUE ENGLISH words,

... or maybe not?

> it only needs about 30 rules to handle a vocabulary of 50- to 70-thousand words.

What's even more impressive, it has 10 rules for just this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_orthography#.22Ough....

... which leaves only 20 rules for all the rest of the language! Sorry I'm being facetious :-)

> and while I'm unable to cite my sources, unfortunately,

It is very unfortunate because these 30 rules would literally save the lives of hundreds of millions of non-native English speakers. Search harder please?

> What a marvellous comment on the excellent status of our education system. NOT!

I'm sure you can fix any problem with more education, including world hunger, but my comment was only about the above average complexity of spelling English. Again you are over-interpreting me.

> Except that "simplification" implies that something was done to make American spelling simpler. It wasn't. In the 1700s (when America and Britain parted company) we spelt it "center" in Britain too. It was only in the 1800s that Britain changed to French spellings. The Americans (sensibly) never followed our lead. It was the London-based dictionary writers who pushed English to use French spellings.

Thanks: this was my main question from the start a couple of posts ago, i.e., "back to original French spellings". Even when the "we" carries an "homogeneous whole" implication which risks to offend some English speakers, it's interesting. Any references on the timeline?

> Except that "the variant" implies that "British English" is a homogenous whole.

Over-interpretation again.

> Try telling that to a Sassenach, Scouser or Geordie!

Since this is (or... "was", *sigh*) a discussion about spellings, how many of these people use different spellings for the same word?

Great Vowel Shift

Posted Jul 6, 2014 14:56 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> Since this is (or... "was", *sigh*) a discussion about spellings, how many of these people use different spellings for the same word?

Is it a Loch, a Lake, or a Lough?

(Scots, English and Irish)

:-)

Cheers,
Wol

Great Vowel Shift

Posted Jul 6, 2014 16:55 UTC (Sun) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (2 responses)

> Except that "the variant" implies that "British English" is a homogenous whole. Try telling that to a Sassenach, Scouser or Geordie! Even going to visit my daughter in Yorkshire we sometimes have trouble understanding the people there because they have a *different* *vocabulary* to us southerners.

It's not as if "American English" is all that homogeneous either (though it might be *more*, it certainly isn't perfectly uniform). I definitely have "isms" I use that catch people up every now and then. For example, I've met people who didn't know what "quarter of 3" meant in response to "what time is it?" and I thought that one was pretty universal…

Great Vowel Shift

Posted Jul 6, 2014 22:46 UTC (Sun) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (1 responses)

In case anyone was wondering, quarter of 3 is 3/4, or 0.75. Whoever insists it's 11/4, or 2.75, is sadly confused. (But I feel obliged to admit I have been caught saying "a quarter shy of 3" to mean 2.75.) When you hear someone say "it's a quarter of ten", you are within your rights to interject "a quarter of ten is two and a half".

Prepositions in all languages are delightfully fluid.

I challenge Wol's assertion that most words in English come from German. The Germanic words just get repeated a lot more than the others. Really, though, German and French both have tenuous claims. Practically all trace to Proto-Indo-european, with French, German, Latin, and Greek only squatting for a short time.

Great Vowel Shift

Posted Jul 6, 2014 22:56 UTC (Sun) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

Literal interpretation of conversational statements is one of my hobbies[1], but this one hadn't occurred to me. Should be fun with the 24-hour clock as well. Alternatively, I'll use "quarter 'til". However, daily time is already a hybrid beast (bases 12 or 24 and 60, with 10 once you subdivide seconds), that "quarter of" having a different meaning about it is, IMO, fine (also, no one cares about fractions of wall clock time; only of interval times).

[1]Basically act as if everyone is punning all the time and react accordingly.

Great Vowel Shift

Posted Jul 4, 2014 7:36 UTC (Fri) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> And what is "British English", pray?

Sorry can't resist mentioning this too... British English is one variant of English where the XX/YY/ZZZZ date format makes some kind of sense :-)

Great Vowel Shift

Posted Jul 4, 2014 11:21 UTC (Fri) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link] (1 responses)

> Never heard of the Great Vowel Shift.

Well, that tells how much of an authority on language matters you are :)

Great Vowel Shift

Posted Jul 10, 2014 17:13 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Quite. It's the single most significant change to the phonology of the language in the last thousand years!

(As for the nonsense about 'TRUE ENGLISH' words having simple pronunciation, that's only true if you define 'TRUE ENGLISH' as 'those words that can be pronounced according to arbitrary rules I devise'.)

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 3, 2014 9:32 UTC (Thu) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

I can assure you that it's not the Victorians that decided to write "colour" and "centre"; those spellings were well-established at the time Noah Webster decided they were silly, and his American Dictionary of the English Language (which used "color" and "center") went to press in 1828, when HRH Princess Alexandrina Victoria of Kent was nine years old.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 15, 2014 11:14 UTC (Tue) by ms-tg (subscriber, #89231) [Link] (1 responses)

>>> What do you mean by "effects"?
>> The *operation* of anything to change state. So, for example, if one had a piece
>> of hardware that emitted a vibration. And a software program that could caused
>> it to emit certain patterns of vibrations...
> In that case, the effect is entirely due to the hardware. Software doesn't cause the
> hardware to emit vibrations; the hardware emits vibrations in accordance with
> software instructions. The instructions by themselves are passive; they don't
> *cause* anything. They just sit there in memory until the hardware acts on them.
> To draw an analogy, sheet music doesn't cause a singer to produce a particular
> note; the singer produces the note in accordance with the instructions. The cause
> is the singer, not the sheet music.

So what about patents on the following types of effects:
1. Moving packets of data among heterogeneous and flaky hardware (networking)
2. Simulating hardware (virtualization)
3. Accepting a new form of human input (user interface)
4. Providing a new form of human output (user interface)

I've seen software patents that relate to each of these types of effects. In each case it's the fact that a concept is reduced to practice (ie "the computer is really doing this new effect now, and here's how") that is the core of the patent.

How are you squaring that circle?

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 15, 2014 13:26 UTC (Tue) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]

How are they any different?

> 1. Moving packets of data among heterogeneous and flaky hardware (networking)

The computer here is not making the effect, the network adapter is (in fact, the transceiver). What the computer does is orchestrate and control.

> 2. Simulating hardware (virtualization)

Virtualization is a pure software thing. You cannot generate sound, for instance, without a sound card, even if you virtualize it. In fact, the very fact that you can run a sound program without a sound device (and have it produce data instead of sound) should be a hint that the program is in fact much more abstract than the machine it runs on (and that it needs to produce the effect). But you will not get any sound without *real* hardware, that is clear.

> 3. Accepting a new form of human input (user interface)

Input (human or else) is just using sensors to read data from the real world. This is done by hardware. The case is the reverse of 2. In this case, there's no effect unless you add some output device.

> 4. Providing a new form of human output (user interface)

See point 2. You need real hardware for that. Say you want to print a sheet of paper. Who will do that, the computer or the printer? The software running on the computer, or the printer? The printer, of course. What the software can do is orchestrate. It provides the organization, the instructions, the "music".

> In each case it's the fact that a concept is reduced to practice

Not the concept. Except for 2 (which is a pure software thing) there's no concept, but a real hardware device. And for 2 there's no new effect.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jun 30, 2014 22:05 UTC (Mon) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (1 responses)

> A program is a pure mathematical function from a set of abstract inputs to a set of abstract outputs. This can be modeled as streams or continuations, or using monads as in Haskell. The inputs can include data from external systems (like a keyboard or disk) and the outputs can be routed to external systems as well (like a disk or monitor). Or it could all be a simulation. To the software, external I/O is all abstract; it's the hardware that turns abstract states into concrete, physical I/O, and vice-versa.

While that definition is fine as far as it goes, it basically suggests that a block of text on a computer is somehow abstract, whereas if it were on paper it would not be. It also suggests that if we were inside the Matrix nothing would be patentable, which seems an absurd conclusion.

But to go back to the point about abstracts ideas not being patentable, it's worthwhile to note that (AFAICT) the US Patent Law doesn't say that anywhere. Instead it's a definition the Supreme Court invented that rule themselves so they can change it. There is a trend in society to to treating digital objects more like physical ones, for example the theft of objects in games.

I think this trend will only continue, so it seems only a matter of time before someone would consider a process manipulating such objects to be patentable. After all, one of the things defining an abstract idea is the lack of utility, but I don't think you can claim compression algorithms don't have utility. I can easily see a court making the decision that patenting the idea of a compression algorithm is not allowed by being too abstract, whereas a specific algorithm might actually pass.

With some googling I found [1] which describes my point better than I could, showing the Supreme Court flip-flopping all over the place. Like I said earlier, I agree that allowing patents on e.g. compression algorithms would be bad, I'm just not convinced the Supreme Court is ever likely to some to that conclusion. We need better arguments.

[1] The Paradox of Abstract Ideas by Alan L. Durham, http://epubs.utah.edu/index.php/ulr/article/viewFile/641/462

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 1, 2014 14:42 UTC (Tue) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]

> While that definition is fine as far as it goes, it basically suggests that a block of text on a computer is somehow abstract, whereas if it were on paper it would not be.

I don't think it suggests anything of the sort. A block of text would be just as abstract on paper as on a computer. It doesn't matter whether the data is stored as electrons or magnetic domains in a computer memory or as graphite marks on paper.

> It also suggests that if we were inside the Matrix nothing would be patentable, which seems an absurd conclusion.

When you start with an absurd premise, expect an absurd conclusion.

> There is a trend in society to to treating digital objects more like physical ones, for example the theft of objects in games.

Yes, and this trend is very disturbing. Real property rights are being eroded in favor of fake ones. Patents are part of this trend. While I do think software patents can be distinguished from other patents, I wouldn't mind seeing the entire system go away. It's not like some patents are good but software patents are bad; it's a matter of bad and worse. We'd be better off without either.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 3, 2014 7:47 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> Software is not *just* math. Software is also effects.

Software is anything (abstract) that goes through the ALU. As should be obvious from what the TLA stands for - Arithmetic Logic Unit.

As for the effects, well the ALU is hardware, therefore stuff going through it will make it do things, but what it does is not software.

If you understand what is abstract, then the difference between software and hardware is easy to grasp. Think of a clock LED. It gets fed the abstract byte code 0100 (I don't know, and more importantly don't NEED to know) the physical representation thereof. That's software. The relevant LED strips light up and I can SEE (and need to know what they represent) the physical representation of a four. That's hardware.

Basically, if you can describe what it is without knowing (or caring) about the physical representation, it's software. If the physical embodiment is important, it's hardware.

Cheers,
Wol

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jun 29, 2014 21:56 UTC (Sun) by dvdeug (guest, #10998) [Link] (28 responses)

All finite byte strings have an encoding where they take up zero space. The game with a compression algorithm is to handle real-life byte strings well, in a way that can be run quickly on the hardware. Calling that math is like saying that any patent just uses physics.

MPEG compression uses mathematical tools, in the exact same way that every patent uses physics-based tools. But the goal of MPEG compression (to look good to humans) is not mathematically definable, and there's a lot of choices in MPEG that aren't dictated by the math. For example, what colorspace compresses the best (on real life data) without losing what humans consider important is not mathematically definable.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jun 29, 2014 23:59 UTC (Sun) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link] (27 responses)

> All finite byte strings have an encoding where they take up zero space.

While true in one (not very useful) sense, the standard way to judge the effectiveness of a compression algorithm is to consider the size of the decompression program along with the compressed encoding. It's obviously trivial to specify an encoding that turns any one particular finite byte string into an empty string, while making any other input longer. However, you can't recreate the information from nothing; it's either in the encoding or in the decoder.

> The game with a compression algorithm is to handle real-life byte strings well, in a way that can be run quickly on the hardware. Calling that math is like saying that any patent just uses physics.

A device or process may *use* the laws of physics, but it isn't itself a law of physics. Software doesn't just use math, it *is* math.

A patent on rubber-curing, to pick one example, makes use of the laws of physics but is actually a patent on a particular way of physically transforming raw materials into cured rubber. Creating cured rubber in that way would infringe on the patent; a simulation would not, even though it references the same physical laws. A patent on a compression algorithm would be a patent on the actual math. It would be like trying to patent the laws of physics related to curing rubber, rather than the act itself.

Running quickly is largely independent of the actual hardware. Those sort of platform-specific micro-optimizations tend toward a constant factor speedup at best. Efficiency mainly comes down to picking the right algorithms for the evaluation strategy, which, as I've already pointed out, is equivalent to simplifying a mathematical proof in the corresponding logic system. In any case, the result is still an algorithm, and thus math.

> But the goal of MPEG compression (to look good to humans) is not mathematically definable, and there's a lot of choices in MPEG that aren't dictated by the math.

But those choices *are* dictated by the math. You start with a mathematical model of human perception, determined by scientific observation and statistics, and use that model to decide which information you can throw away and which information you need to keep. For each model there will be a particular set of optimum choices.

In any case, whether you painstakingly calculated the optimal choices or arrived at them by trial and error, the final result is still a mathematical algorithm.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jun 30, 2014 2:01 UTC (Mon) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link] (22 responses)

> Software doesn't just use math, it *is* math.

Interesting claim. Could you provide (a link to?) a precise definition of "math" which would allow me to assess this claim. My own imprecise definition doesn't seem to lead to this identity.

> For each model there will be a particular set of optimum choices.

Maybe it is the model that is the innovation then. I do not think that a set of scientific observations and statistics will leading inexorably to a single model. Extracting a model from observations could easily qualify as an inventive step for me.

Nor am I convinced that a given model leads deterministically to a particular algorithm, though maybe the difference there would be more in the realm of copyright than patent.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jun 30, 2014 17:24 UTC (Mon) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link] (21 responses)

> Could you provide (a link to?) a precise definition of "math" which would allow me to assess this claim.

It's a complicated topic, and you're welcome to do your own research, but Wikipedia has a fairly good overview:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics#Definitions_of_m...

There are a number of different competing definitions, but for the most part it doesn't matter which one you choose; all the major variations (logicist, intuitionist, and formalist) are in agreement on this point.

> Maybe it is the model that is the innovation then.

Your problem is that you haven't really been arguing that software isn't math; you're arguing that (some kinds of) math should be patent-eligible. And now you're dropping the software part entirely and suggesting patents on pure mathematical models.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 1, 2014 2:18 UTC (Tue) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link] (20 responses)

Thanks for the link. I'll choose "Mathematics is what mathematicians do", which seems as good and any of the others. Your identity suggests that "Software is what mathematicians do" is also correct (As software *is* math). I don't find that convincing.

As there appears (from that link) that there is no agreement about what math is, I think it would be very hard to argue that software *is* it.

But you are correct that I am really arguing that (some kinds of) math should be patent-eligible - at least in part.

The purpose of a parent is to motivate inventors to make the substantial investment required to invent something of value. I think that "mathematical" inventions (E.g. compression algorithms) can be just as valuable and require just as much investment as any other inventions.
Why should we devalue our work by saying that it isn't good enough to be patented?

I would generally disagree with software patents, not because the subject matter has any character which makes it ineligible, but because the economic case for patents doesn't appear to apply to the current market for software.

i.e. the extra innovation that patent rights might generate is less than the cost to innovation that enforcing those rights imposes.
And I think this is because the computing landscape moves so fast. I would have no objection at all to a 2 year patent grant of any "non-obvious" software idea. Maybe even 4 years. More than that and the parent will slow things down more than it speeds things up.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 1, 2014 7:54 UTC (Tue) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> I would generally disagree with software patents, not because the subject matter has any character which makes it ineligible, but because the economic case for patents doesn't appear to apply to the current market for software.

Sounds very sensible, but even this would be still far from the most urgent problem.

It's entertaining to see engineers discussing how to fix laws, but I think it is much more productive when engineers' energy is focused on engineering: i.e., fixing the USPTO rather than the laws. The main patent problem right now is not to decide whether software is patentable or whether software is pure maths - quite entertaining but not terribly useful. The main patent problem is: how come the USPTO issues patents on "1-click buy" or "slide to unlock". Clearly, the USPTO is missing quite a few PHOSITAs, i.e., engineers. Or maybe just an massive injection of common sense. How about IT patents requiring approval from the IEEE or some other similar body? This site has a number of other, more practical, more agreeable and immediately productive fixes:

https://defendinnovation.org/

While it's always more pleasant to have a pub discussion about American constitution and/or science, chances are common sense and good old engineering could be enough to get rid of all patent trolls.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 1, 2014 8:23 UTC (Tue) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]

> Your identity suggests that "Software is what mathematicians do" is also correct (As software *is* math). I don't find that convincing.

Why? They do quite a lot of software. I swear, I'm a former math student. In fact I learned C++ just for that.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 1, 2014 15:15 UTC (Tue) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link] (17 responses)

> I'll choose "Mathematics is what mathematicians do", which seems as good and any of the others. Your identity suggests that "Software is what mathematicians do" is also correct (As software *is* math). I don't find that convincing.

Then the problem is with you, and what you find convincing. You said you wanted something specific, and yet picked the vaguest and least-serious definition on the page. If you're going to go with that definition, however, then it implies that whatever a mathematician does is mathematics. Some mathematicians do software, so software is math. (And some mathematicians walk their dogs, so walking a dog is math... I did say it wasn't a very good definition.)

> As there appears (from that link) that there is no agreement about what math is, I think it would be very hard to argue that software *is* it.

There is no agreement on a single, concise, formal definition. That doesn't mean there isn't consensus on whether particular subject areas fall under the heading of "mathematics". Nearly all mathematicians can be classified as logicist, intuitionist, or formalist, and all three definitions treat software as branch of mathematics. Theories of computation, Turing-completeness, the typed and untyped lambda calculus, proofs and their equivalence to type systems--these are all well-established as being within the mathematical domain.

> But you are correct that I am really arguing that (some kinds of) math should be patent-eligible - at least in part.

With this admission, I believe my work here is done.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 1, 2014 15:58 UTC (Tue) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (16 responses)

> Nearly all mathematicians can be classified as logicist, intuitionist, or formalist, and all three definitions treat software as branch of mathematics. Theories of computation,...

It's fortunate non-mathematicians consider software as their branch too, so we can get something practical and useful and not just theories.

> With this admission, I believe my work here is done.

Bye!

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 1, 2014 17:39 UTC (Tue) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link] (15 responses)

> It's fortunate non-mathematicians consider software as their branch too, so we can get something practical and useful and not just theories.

There are, of course, both theoretical and applied branches of mathematics, just as there are theoretical and applied branches of physics, chemistry, etc. An accountant adding up column of numbers in a spreadsheet is doing math just as much as some tenured university professor working toward a proof of the Cherlin–Zilber conjecture. The programmer who writes the accounting package is also doing math, whether he/she realizes it or not. It takes all kinds. Without the theories there would be no practice; without the practice the theories would serve no purpose.

A programmer can be thought of as a mathematician specializing in applied computer science. The fact that most programmers don't concern themselves with the theoretical underpinnings of their field doesn't make the field any less a branch of mathematics.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 1, 2014 21:48 UTC (Tue) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (14 responses)

> An accountant adding up column of numbers in a spreadsheet is doing math just as much as some tenured university professor working toward a proof of the Cherlin–Zilber conjecture.

Finally a clear definition of mathematics! :-)

> A programmer can be thought of as a mathematician specializing in applied computer science. The fact that most programmers don't concern themselves with the theoretical underpinnings of their field doesn't make the field any less a branch of mathematics.

I don't in which ivory tower you live but sorry; you clearly have no idea about what is the day job of the average software engineer. Just like for any other engineering field, (computer) science, theory and maths tend to be a extremely small part of it. We could talk about design patterns, continuous integration; bug tracking, workflows, version control, project management, teamwork, release processes, validation, etc. but I'll keep it short and say only this: probably the largest effort in coding is actually communicating with your colleagues and peers - not with the machines.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 1, 2014 23:45 UTC (Tue) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link] (4 responses)

> probably the largest effort in coding is actually communicating with your colleagues and peers - not with the machines.

But without communicating with the machines you wouldn't be a programmer. You'd be a project manager.

A large part of any job is in the communication. Only very simple jobs don't need it. But each job does have that one important part that separates it from other jobs. The plumbing, programming or scalpel cutting may be a small part of each day but without it you wouldn't be a plumber, programmer or surgeon.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 2, 2014 6:26 UTC (Wed) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (3 responses)

> The plumbing, programming or scalpel cutting may be a small part of each day but without it you wouldn't be a plumber, programmer or surgeon.

There is a massive difference. When a plumber is actually "plumbing" or a surgeon operating their main task and focus and energy and time are not spent communicating with other human beings; as opposed to when a programmer is writing code. By nature software (or hardware) development is an activity orders of magnitude more "social" than plumbing or surgery (Surgery is actually one of the very least; a significant number of surgeons think they sit somewhere between God and the rest of us - but I digress)

The need to highlight this difference on the *Linux* Weekly News community web site is a bit surprising considering Linux is probably one of the largest collaborative community project ever but there you go.

I am aware that many junior programmers don't realize this until they have gathered some experience; I've witnessed this realization process many times. Sometimes it may come as a disappointment, as in: "what do you mean teamwork and code reviews, I entered this job so I could avoid human interaction?"

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 2, 2014 19:15 UTC (Wed) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link] (1 responses)

> When a plumber is actually "plumbing" or a surgeon operating their main task and focus and energy and time are not spent communicating with other human beings; as opposed to when a programmer is writing code. By nature software (or hardware) development is an activity orders of magnitude more "social" than plumbing or surgery

No when a programmer is writing code the primary purpose is "does it work?" If it does not properly tell the computer how to do the job, the code is a FAILURE no matter how pretty or well documented it is.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 2, 2014 23:58 UTC (Wed) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> No when a programmer is writing code the primary purpose is "does it work?"

Yes, very "primary".

Even if we limit writing code to "make it work" for one second: how much of a mathematical/theoretical effort does "make it work" typically involve? Unless you are 1) successfully fooling your manager and having fun re-inventing some wheels, or 2) working on some exceptional R&D project, the answer is: practically none.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 4, 2014 22:18 UTC (Fri) by jubal (subscriber, #67202) [Link]

By nature software (or hardware) development is an activity orders of magnitude more "social" than plumbing or surgery (Surgery is actually one of the very least; a significant number of surgeons think they sit somewhere between God and the rest of us - but I digress)

A little nitpick: surgeons might be not exactly social and may think they're gods or godesses incarnated, but all of them have to be very efficient communicators. Surgery is a teamwork in the strictest sense of the word and requires constant and effective communication – there are no lone stars in the operating theatre, even if they enjoy behaving in a sligthly operatic style.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 2, 2014 9:21 UTC (Wed) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link] (8 responses)

What do you think mathematicians do all day? write equations?

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 2, 2014 9:41 UTC (Wed) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link]

> What do you think mathematicians do all day? write equations?

I have it on good authority that they stare at dots and dashes all day, and think.

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-power-of-dot...

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 2, 2014 15:03 UTC (Wed) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (6 responses)

For sure the majority of them is not creating software *products*; because the people who do don't call themselves mathematicians.

If you like you can call software engineering: "Very applied branch of mathematics where you can find plenty jobs even if you barely understood anything in maths class at school", and RTL design: "Very applied branch of physics and chemistry for people who don't need to know them - rather software instead". However I'm afraid this won't ever make much difference to patent law.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 2, 2014 21:53 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (5 responses)

Oh, please. Maths class at school has sod-all to do with actual mathematics (or at least it didn't until very recently, and still doesn't in most of the world). School maths classes are about procedures of computation, which were really useful until we got machines that could do that stuff for us at blazing speed with flawless accuracy. (When was the last time you used long division on paper, which if you're more than a few years out of school I'm sure they spent ages on? What about hand multiplication? Are these useful skills in daily life for random human beings in a modern society any more? I don't think so... we have machines to do that sort of thing now. Hand computation is rapidly going the way of handwriting with fountain pens: a retro skill maintained by a small minority.)

I did really, really badly at school mathematics. So did an awful lot of actual working mathematicians (among whom I am not numbered, I hasten to add). I edged into maths via the lambda calculus and proofs, and was astonished to find that I found it wonderfully easy compared to procedural computation: it felt like programming.

This is, I think, not specific to me being weird. What you need for working mathematics is very much not what you need for school maths classes, and is very much more like what you need for programming: a skill at spotting patterns and rigour in reasoning. It's just that maths has several hundred years' more knowledge behind it, so there's a larger knowledge base than in programming, and it's more interconnected than random programming facts are. But to my eyes that makes maths *more* like the ideal of programming than programming is: both are all about the connections and the patterns and what you can do with them, and maths has more of those than programming does.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 2, 2014 22:26 UTC (Wed) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (3 responses)

When I wrote "school" I really meant: end of secondary / university. That is: algebra, geometry, analysis,...

Sorry for the confusion.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 10, 2014 17:14 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

Ah, the US English definition of 'school' that I always forget exists. Makes sense now: my rant was misdirected.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 10, 2014 20:27 UTC (Thu) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (1 responses)

> the US English definition of 'school'

US English? Mmmm... http://www.lse.ac.uk/

Looks like the word "school" can be confusing in many places! For sure the direct translation in French can be very vague too.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 16, 2014 18:46 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Just because there is a term 'school' used in the names of various parts of the UK university system does not mean that it is in common use for parts of the UK university system outside those names. Say that someone is going to school in the UK and your listener (if a BrE speaker) will *not* interpret it as meaning that they are going to university.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 2, 2014 22:33 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

Hey, long division is useful - I use it in mental math all the time.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jun 30, 2014 2:31 UTC (Mon) by dvdeug (guest, #10998) [Link] (3 responses)

A magnetic launcher is dictated in all its details by force of gravity, the tensile strength of the objects fed through it, the properties of electromagnetism. That's physics in the exact same way you're calling the MPEG algorithm math.

Note also, if the MPEG algorithm is just math, then so is any song. An MP3 player is a function of, say, input MP3 and output format, and can be thus partially specialized to be a Tom's Diner player, which is no more or less a mathematical function then the original. You can summarize that way, but society has chosen not to, and hence it's not a productive argument. Society will not end all copyrights because they are in some sense math, and thus will so no reason to end all software patents because they are in some sense math.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jun 30, 2014 3:55 UTC (Mon) by mgb (guest, #3226) [Link] (2 responses)

Songs and software are copyrightable but not patentable.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jun 30, 2014 4:04 UTC (Mon) by dvdeug (guest, #10998) [Link] (1 responses)

Software algorithms are frequently patentable. And you say that as if patenting an algorithm is wrong but copyrighting an algorithm (say, the one that produces Tom's Diner in Ogg Vorbis format) is okay.

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jun 30, 2014 4:32 UTC (Mon) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

software algorithms are frequently patented, it's not clear that they are patentable

algorithms are one of the abstract idea categories that are not supposed to be patentable, this is why so many software patents recite the characteristics of a general purpose computer, it's to try and make things seem as if it's a real machine being created

copyrighting software/music/books is seen as pretty reasonable because it protects that way of doing things.

getting the rights to all possible ways of doing something may be valid for vary narrowly defined cases (the RSA algorithm for example, which didn't block DSA, ECC or other approaches to Public Key Encryption)

The problem is that 99.99+% of software patents are like RSA getting exclusive rights to anything that looks like Public Key Encryption, not just their one way of implementing it. (or worse, they are on ideas that are trivial)

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 3, 2014 7:38 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

> I heard he spent hundreds of hours inventing the light bulb after he (along with plenty of other people) had the idea.

Actually, he spent hundreds of hours inventing it after he'd gone and visited a factory making the things ... Go and check the dates, his *rejected* patent in which he claimed to invent the lightbulb is dated *after* he visited England and visited Joseph Swann's factory in Birmingham.

But apart from that, I pretty much agree with you. If I enlist Einstein and Gedandken's help, because I've had the bright idea of using wormholes for space travel, and I prove it can be done, that's not patentable. Because I haven't done it. I can't do it, and my patent stops anyone else doing it. Those patents are illegal. But if I do it, then the patent can cover the way I do it.

I know they've scrapped the "all patent applications should be accompanied by a working model", but I think they should - sort of - bring that back. All patents SHOULD be accompanied by an affidavit that says a working model exists (it could, in the case of a chemical factory, for example, be the factory itself), and such model MUST be made available to the court in any suit. Failure to produce the model is prima facie evidence of an invalid patent. Of course, if the model has been accidentally destroyed, or stuff like that, then the court has discretion, but if it finds no evidence that the model ever existed in the first place ...

Cheers,
Wol

Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court

Posted Jul 3, 2014 8:24 UTC (Thu) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> I know they've scrapped the "all patent applications should be accompanied by a working model"

That's just absolutely insane when you think about it... One of the very obvious ways the USPTO is broken, much, MUCH more obvious than our current arcane and futile discussions about abstract ideas, maths, software and hardware.

Repeat: https://defendinnovation.org/

What is mathematics, and why software is maths

Posted Jul 3, 2014 23:43 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (6 responses)

First of all, this isn't meant to be an in-depth treatise. But a big part of the problem is that we have a fair few people who don't use words the way we do - as per humpty dumpty, "words mean what I say they mean", except that when other people think they mean something else, we get massive confusion.

Someone asked "what is mathematics", and I would answer "mathematics is a logical model". So "doing mathematics" is "using logic" or "reasoning" (in the sense of a verb, not a noun).

If you want a series of treatises on how software is maths, I would point you to PolR's excellent articles on Groklaw. I'm afraid I'm going to go all philosophical on you, but the point is I have actually tried to get my head round questions like "What is maths? What is science? What is reality?". Too many people just assume somebody else has answered those questions, and act upon that assumption. And thereby make an ass of themselves ... the problem is that groupthink, even when totally wrong, actually has considerable survival value, so the independent thinkers who really know the answer get ignored ...

Anyways. Let's start at the beginning. Or at the beginning of modern Science, anyways, with Newton. Who was most definitely NOT a physicist. Not even a scientist! He was a Philosopher. He would have called himself a Natural Philosopher, as opposed to a Theologian, but the point is, both of these used logic to reason about the world. The Natural Philosopher used logic to reason about God's Creation, and the Theologian used logic to reason about God and mankind. Back then, people didn't see any problem with having a foot in both camps, and even today many people who actually study the issue *for* *themselves* can't see any problem. But let's forget about Theologians from now on ...

Newton wrote "In Principia Mathematica" - "The Principles of Mathematics", one of the first mathematical text books. He discovered Calculus. He used all this to reason about the world, to make a logical model, and created Newtonian Mechanics.

Like ALL mathematics, Newtonian Mechanics is based upon a bunch of assumptions, or axioms. Newton assumed that Euclid's postulate, that parallel lines never meet, is true. He assumed that mass was a constant, that it is neither created nor destroyed. And he built his Mechanics on that foundation, and discovered that the real world did pretty much what his maths led him to expect.

Maybe a hundred years after Newton, this grew into the distinction between Maths and Science. Mathematics became the creation of a logical model, and Science became the art of experimenting to see whether reality and maths co-incided. At which point, language decided to add to the confusion, because as you can see, as far as I am concerned, "theoretical physics" is clearly not a Science, but is a branch of mathematics. And science itself is now a branch of engineering ... As for Computer Science, what's that quote? "Computer Science has nothing to do with Science, and precious little to do with computers". Of course, because as I intend to show, it's a branch of maths :-)

About a hundred years after Newton, the philosophers (ie mathematicians, scientists, whoever ...) got really concerned that reality didn't seem to be matching up to Newtonian Mechanics as well as it should. There are three possible fault lines here. Either the science is dodgy (the experiments are faulty and producing duff results), the maths is wrong and contains mistakes, or it's the wrong maths and the fundamental assumptions are mistaken.

Round about 1920, there's actually a very good example of the first two. Read Dick Feynmann. Some fundamental particle was identified as having certain properties, and as further research went on, the discrepancy between what was observed, and the mathematical model, just got more and more pronounced. Dick realised that if this particle had just one property changed, everything suddenly would make a lot more sense, and he went back and looked at the original experiment. There was *one* outlier result in the experimental set which had led to the original conclusion. Ignore that one result and the remaining results now gave the opposite - and far more sensible in the light of subsequent experiments - result.

So here we have experimental error - Science - and a mathematical error - a failure to realise that the overall result was dominated by a single result that was sufficiently skewed as to change the final result!

The third fault line is the one that led to relativity. Various mathematicians started ignoring Euclid's postulate and then Einstein realised that mass was NOT constant. By changing the fundamental assumptions, they came up with a new maths, that was a better match to the world.

Now let's look at what we're doing when we're programming. But first we need to take a quick look at the doctrine of equivalence. That basically says that "8" is the same thing as "4+4" or "9-1" or "100B" or "10-2 in base 10" etc. They are all *logically* *indistinguishable*, they are *the* *same* *thing*.

So when we write a program, we are using logic to write down a series of logical steps. We are doing maths, and those logical steps ARE MATHS. When we run the program and discover a bug, we are DOING MATHS when we use logic to look for the bug.

When we write our program on coding sheets, it is maths. When we transcribe it onto the computer into a text document it is *logically* *indistinguishable*, it's the same thing. When we feed it through a compiler it is *logically* *indistinguishable*, when we feed the object code through a linker ... the doctrine of equivalence says they're all the same thing.

Now we run the program on a computer ... the COMPUTER is DOING the maths. There is our important distinction - the program IS maths, the computer DOES maths. And because the computer is hardware, and is doing, it is capable of affecting the real world.

Read Feynmann again, and his account of the Manhattan Project computer they built. It took up a big room. And it was just a bunch of desks, with programmable adding machines, with people at the machines doing basic arithmetic, and other people passing results from one machine to the next.

This is what I believe the European Patent Treaty was getting at when it said that software "as such" is not patentable - if it is maths, a logical sequence of instructions to be executed, then it is "software as such". Of course, the lawyers have got at it and corrupted it.

But if you can get into your head the concept that HARDWARE DOES maths, while SOFTWARE IS maths, then what should and shouldn't be patentable will be a lot clearer. And it's clear also, that software is just a list of logical instructions (it can be written down on a sheet of paper) so it clearly falls into the definition of maths.

After all, if software wasn't maths, you couldn't prove it correct :-) Just observing it working apparently correctly doesn't prove a thing :-) (other than that there are no obvious bugs ...)

Cheers,
Wol

What is mathematics, and why software is maths

Posted Jul 4, 2014 0:29 UTC (Fri) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link] (5 responses)

Thanks for the write up - I loved it!

Just to clarify something:

> HARDWARE DOES maths, while SOFTWARE IS maths,

I think I understand and accept that.
Does that mean that a recipe to bake a cake is also maths, and that when I'm following the recipe, I'm doing maths?

What about the list of steps outlined in a patent for curing rubber? Is that maths too?
Certainly one might use science to determine what set of steps works best, but the set of steps themselves (if I understand you correctly) is maths. They encapsulate an abstract understanding (or model) of (part of) the world.

If it isn't maths, can you explain why not? What is the dividing line?

What is mathematics, and why software is maths

Posted Jul 4, 2014 12:31 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (3 responses)

> Does that mean that a recipe to bake a cake is also maths, and that when I'm following the recipe, I'm doing maths?

My immediate reaction was "yes, surely it sounds like it should be, but I'm not sure it is". Now I'm pretty certain it's not, that it's technology, but the reason is interesting ...

Let's take a program to model the Bank Of England's monetary policy. You run the program, you feed a bunch of numbers in, you get a bunch of numbers out. Those numbers can be represented as gallons of water, electric voltages, or magnetic poles, that's irrelevant. The same input in always gives the same output out. (Apparently the BoE did have a "computer" that you ran by pouring water in to it.)

Now let's bake a cake - we take 4oz flour, 4oz sugar, 4oz butter and 2 eggs. Mix it all up and cook for 20 mins at 220. We have several problems here - is your sugar sucrose, fructose, or honey? Are you eggs standard 2oz eggs? Is you butter salted or unsalted? Oh - and no you CAN'T say "I haven't got any sugar, I'll use salt instead" or swap custard powder in place of flour.

Put rather more formally, maths cares very much about precisely specifying your inputs, but it doesn't care how they are represented. Technology cares very much about how your inputs are represented, but cares rather less about precision.

So I'd say your cake recipe is very similar to maths (indeed maths is a subset of recipes), but your cake recipe is not maths because it's precise about the representation of the inputs - maths doesn't care. So it's the other way round - all maths is a recipe, but not all recipes are maths.

Cheers,
Wol

What is mathematics, and why software is maths

Posted Jul 5, 2014 2:13 UTC (Sat) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link] (2 responses)

I certainly agree that precision is an important part of maths (or math, or mathematics - I hate it that we don't have a precise name for such a precise topic!).

But if the difference between math(s), which some claim cannot be patented, and technology, which some say can be patented, is that the one is more precise than the other, does that mean that patent applicants need to be careful not to include too much precision, lest their invention be seen as maths?

So while I agree with most of what you say, it isn't helping me to see a distinction between "maths" and "not maths" which sensibly applies to patents. I understand that the answer may well be "the law is an ass" and "Judges decision is final", but I don't find that a very satisfying answer.

What is mathematics, and why software is maths

Posted Jul 5, 2014 9:36 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

No. The difference is the abstraction.

Look at the computer program where the physical input can be water, voltage or magnetism, or anything else ... the "real" input is abstract.

And the cake, where sugar must be sugar. You can substitute different kinds of sugar, but not salt.

Cheers,
Wol

What is mathematics, and why software is maths

Posted Jul 6, 2014 9:53 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Also, and I thought of this back then but didn't/coudn't work out how to word it - the input into a maths program is exact - as I said, it doesn't matter how it's represented, but it matters that 2 is 2 is 2.

Whereas, with the cake, if your measurements are a bit off, so what. Two large eggs, too smll eggs? The result is still a cake.

With a weather program, the result could be a tornado or a still sunny day ... where are those damn butterflies when you need them :-)

Cheers,
Wol

What is mathematics, and why software is maths

Posted Jul 4, 2014 18:02 UTC (Fri) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

The end result being that the assumptions underlying patents might be logically contradictory and that the idea of patents is probably bogus.