[Patents] Re: EPO 1978: programs vs inventions (fwd)

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

>Whether or not to allow software patents is a question of law and
>politics.  NOT a question about physics.

I completely disagree.  The words used by lawyers and politicians to talk
about software patenting, words such as 'process', 'method', 'machine',
'algorithm', are words whose meaning is defined and reasoned about by
using mathematics and physics.  So one cannot have political and legal
discussions about software patenting without discussions of the underlying
mathematics and physics.  On this I side with a growing number of
European scientists and mathematicians who talk about hardware and
software as equally following from the mathematics and physics of
information processing.

I have no problem that Hartmut or anyone else believes to the contrary.
But do not complain about my occasional posting when Hartmut and others
much more frequently post the same defenses of their opinions.

Greg Aharonian