Re: [Patents] Hardware N Software

[Gregory Aharonian <srctran@world.std.com>]

>Good point.  I would add that "software" reaches a third endpoint:
>pure thought.

Silly.  Are you telling me a circuit diagram (especially one in
VHDL form) isn't pure thought as well?  I mean what is an impure
thought.

The important invention for a new computing process is what is
critical to be disclosed in a patent application and claimed.
That it is implemented in hardware or software is both irrelevant
to patent law, and increasingly an arbitrary choice made by a
hardware/software codesign tool.  To allow the patentability
of the hardware but not the software is a distinction with no
basis in mathematics or logic.  Hardware and software are
economic choices to be made in producing and manufacturing a
new device.

Greg Aharonian