Re: [Patents] Re: Summary of legal arguments

[Mattias Lundström <mattias.lundstrom@digitalroute.com>]

Gregory Aharonian wrote:

> > Many of these start their argument with a definition debate about "what
> > are software patents", trying to score points on the difficulty of the
> > other side in defining something that is understood.
>
> There is no difficulty in defining "software".  Much like a circuit
> diagram or a VHDL listing, "software" is a shorthand notation for a
> specific type of digital machine (for example, all software can be


Merriam-Webster:
---------------
Main Entry: soft·ware
: something used or associated with and usually contrasted with hardware: as
a : the entire set of programs, procedures, and related documentation 
associated
with a system and especially a computer system; specifically : computer 
programs
b : materials for use with audiovisual equipment

Software is not a a term used for a machine except in the very abstract sense
of eg "state machine".
VHDL code is software. A circuit board is not.

Agreed?

Beyond this semantic discussion "software patents" can often (but not always)
be understood to mean "computer program patents". The fact that this may not
always be the case of course injects a little more danger of semantic
confusion.
This is acceptable since any reasonable intelligent person has learned to
handle ill-defined terminology like this while learning a naturally evolving
language (such as English).

> translated into field programmable gate array patterns for their
> implementation).  AS SUCH, software is just as patentable as a


Not in Europe. Only "not as such" computer programs are patentable here ;-)

> circuit diagram, or more specifically, the applied use of the software
> is as patentable as the applied use of the circuit diagram.

> And this is consistent with EPO decisions and with the law.  Further,
> the deliberately ill-defined vague wording of 52.2.C was written at a
> time when people everywhere thought that some aspects of software
> could be protected by copyright.  In the decades since 52.2.C was


And some of us poor confused people still believe this.
And some major organizations actually share this delusion (such as BSA).

> written, the use of copyright for protecting software has been so
> limited by courts on both sides of the Atlantic that today copyright
> is effectively impotent for protecting software.  Had 52.2.C been
> written afresh today, there would be no 52.2.C in it, especially in

> light of today's hardware-software codesign tools which blur any
> applied use distinction between hardware and software.


I take it you also propose patents on pure mathematics and scientific
theories since the borders are blurred?

[cut some more typical Greg text]


-- Mattias