[Patents] Patnews on Pierret

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

Don writes:
>Greg, you don't seem to be willing to draw the line on what is
>patentable and what is not.  Do you even agree that there should
>be a line?  If there is a line, software was more in common with the
>activities on the "no patents" side of the line.

There are lines, there should be lines, and software is on the patentable
side of the line.

And to be clear, I am making my arguments mostly in the context of US
intellectual property law.  People in Europe and free to agree or
disagree from the context of European IP law.

And for US IP law, the line is quite clear:  processes and methods,
tangible or intangible, are patentable, not copyrightable.  That is
a very clear line.  And it is back up with 100 years of court decisions
here in the US.  That is the legal rule.  The mathematics rule is
also quite clear - software (i.e. source code, user interfaces, system
designs, protocols, etc.) are processes and methods.  In fact, if I can
be presumptous and use a language I don't speak:

                        Software ist Verfahren

Don, wonder over to the Stanford mathematics library some afternoon, and
you will find thousands of articles proving/assuming this to be true.

So combine the two, law and mathematics, and software is on the patentable
side of the line, especially in light of hardware/software codesign tools
and systems to map C code directly into FPGAs.

That said, as I have said endlessly, the quality of software patents needs
to be drastically improved, so that all of the crappy software patents
that I and others hold up to ridicule the system, don't issue.

This argument, made formal, may not be completely perfect, but it is close
enough that any argument against software patents is going to be pretty
much economics-based.  The problem there is that like software, the
economics of patenting in other areas of technology have their controversial
issues (said with drug patents in developing countries, etc.).

These economic issues are worthy of discussion, and are being discussed,
but they apply to all areas of patentable technology, not just software.
And if you really concerned about the economics of IP, I would think that
you would be more interested in addressing the economics of the excessive
lifetimes of copyright, 100 years or more of protection, especially if
you want to rely on copyright protection for software (which I will argue
is illogical under US law, the increasingly de facto viewpoint of US IP
law, especially after the Apple and Lotus losses).

Greg Aharonian