[Patents] Re: European arguing for patenting pure math formulas

[srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian)]

Hartmut writes:
>A patent on an invention in the realm of applied natural science is valid
>until the day when someone has mathematically reduced it to prior
>knowledge.

So I suppose you are against all chemical patents, since I can reduce all
chemical structures to quantum mechanical wavefunctions, derive new
chemical by combining such wavefunctions, and even test out the properties
by doing quantum mechanical calculations.  And if you are against
chemicals, you must also be against chemical compositions and gene
sequences, because they are mostly linear superpositions of quantum
mechanical wave functions.

Add your opposition of chemical patents to your opposition of electrical
patents (since all of your arguments against software patents apply
to hardware patents), and all that leaves is your good old, physical,
touchable, huggable, mechanical devices.  By chance, are you Amish?

Greg Aharonian