[Patents] Re: [Patents] re :Answer to requests sent to french Economic

[Gregory Aharonian srctran@world.std.com]

These discussions about defining "software" are fairly pointless,
especially when the politicans are doing the talking.

For example, consider a digital circuit of AND and OR and NOT
gates.  Pure hardware, you say, as does everyone else.

However, with circuit design tools, I can express the digital
circuit structure with VHDL and then use computer tools to
mainpulate the digital circuit (verification, floor planning).

However, I can also translate the VDHDL into Ada or C or something,
and "run" the circuit as an algorith,m.

So in light of patent equivalence laws, I argue that in light of
hardware/software codesign tools, the terms "hardware" and
"software?" are interchangeable, and should be reflected so in
patent laws.

Greg Aharonian