Re: [Patents] Hardware N Software

[Norman Stevens <norman@arcady.u-net.com>]

On Tue, 22 Jan 2002, Gregory Aharonian wrote:

> >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.

In your example neither case should be patentable. You are saying
that there is nothing novel in your hardware device other than
the software hard-coded into it. This is still software. The
distinction you are trying to maintain with these physical
devices is exactly the same distinction between an electronic
form of a program and its hard copy paper listing. 

Norman