From srctran@world.std.com  Tue Nov 21 01:11:23 2000
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 20:11:23 -0500 (EST)
From: Gregory Aharonian srctran@world.std.com
Subject: [Patents] natural forces

>So Greg, you are also in favor of patenting mathematical proofs.  Is
>it mathematical proofs as such, or only mathematical proofs that have
>a technical effect?  Sorry, I forgot that technical effect is a
>meaningless concept.

You are right, it is a meaningless concept.  And, without a definition
of "mathematical proof", I am not sure how to answer.  But in general,
I would say yes.  For example, there are theorem proving programs that
can design digital hardware circuits.  You give the theorem proving
program an input/output mapping, plus the rules of Boolean logic, and
if there is a circuit that can map the input to the output, the program
returns a successful mathematical proof.  Part of the proof is a
description of the hardware circuit.  Further, such theorem proving
systems can be used to design mechanical and chemical structures, again
where the proof contains a description of the implementing structure.
Software, hardware, mechanical, chemical.  To these theorem proving
programs, it doesn't matter, once you map the domain into logic
statements.

So once again I argue that this is another equivalence of software,
hardware, mechanical and chemical that requires that their patentability
be equivalent as well - i.e. there is no distinction to base new laws
on.  Everything Hartmut argues against software patents can be equally
argued against other technology areas as well.  Loss of freedom with
software patents?  How about loss of life with pharmaceutical patents.
And yes, I think it is a shame that the jails in Europe are overflowing
with software programmers founds guilty of infringing a patent - they
deserve that loss of freedom.

Cosmically, since that is where Hartmut's logic seems to flow, the
universe is a quantum computer, and everything in the end reduces to
the informational - software, hardware, chemical, mechanical.  All
big freaking wavefunctions.   Make them all patentable or none, but
please none of these artificial distinctions.

So you ar either against all patent types or for all patent types (which
seems to be the European position, at least those few Europeans hanging
out here). 

Greg




