8/2001: Donald Knuth on Software Patents

[Seth Johnson <seth.johnson@RealMeasures.dyndns.org>]

(Forwarded from Digital Copyright / Canada Discussion list;
originally from CPI/Universal Access list.  -- Seth)

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [d@DCC] Software Patents: Letter from Donald Knuth
(fwd)
Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 12:54:13 -0400 (EDT)
From: Russell McOrmond <russell@flora.ca>
To: General Copyright Discussions
<discuss@digital-copyright.ca>


The date on the file is 08/31/2001, so it was posted almost
a year ago, but it deserves to continue to be circulated -
especially in forums where Government Bureaucrats may pick
it up and pass it onward to IPPD

> http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/SSG/ip00001e.html


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 12:41:20 -0400
From: Colin J. Williams
To: CPI-Universal Access <cpi-ua@vancouvercommunity.net>
Subject: [CPI-UA] Software Patents: Letter from Donald Knuth

This letter was posted about a year ago.

I hadn't come across it previously.

Colin W

> http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/knuth-to-pto.txt

_______________________________________________________________
Letter to the Patent Office

From Professor Donald Knuth

Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks
Box 4
Patent and Trademark Office
Washington, DC 20231

Dear Commissioner:

Along with many other computer scientists, I would like to
ask you to reconsider the current policy of giving patents
for computational processes.  I find a considerable anxiety
throughout the community of practicing computer scientists
that decisions by the patent courts and the Patent and
Trademark Office are making life much more difficult for
programmers.

In the period 1945-1980, it was generally believed that
patent law did not pertain to software.  However, it now
appears that some people have received patents for
algorithms of practical importance--e.g., Lempel-Ziv
compression and RSA public key encryption--and are now
legally preventing other programmers from using these
algorithms.

This is a serious change from the previous policy under
which the computer revolution became possible, and I fear
this change will be harmful for society.  It certainly would
have had a profoundly negative effect on my own work: For
example, I developed software called TeX that is now used to
produce more than 90% of all books and journals in
mathematics and physics and to produce hundreds of thousands
of technical reports in all scientific disciplines.  If
software patents had been commonplace in 1980, I would not
have been able to create such a system, nor would I probably
have ever thought of doing it, nor can I imagine anyone else
doing so.

I am told that the courts are trying to make a distinction
between mathematical algorithms and nonmathematical
algorithms.  To a computer scientist, this makes no sense,
because every algorithm is as mathematical as anything could
be.  An algorithm is an abstract concept unrelated to
physical laws of the universe.

Nor is it possible to distinguish between "numerical" and
"nonnumerical" algorithms, as if numbers were somehow
different from other kinds of precise information.  All data
are numbers, and all numbers are data.  Mathematicians work
much more with symbolic entities than with numbers.

Therefore the idea of passing laws that say some kinds of
algorithms belong to mathematics and some do not strikes me
as absurd as the 19th century attempts of the Indiana
legislature to pass a law that the ratio of a circle's
circumference to its diameter is exactly 3, not
approximately 3.1416.  It's like the medieval church ruling
that the sun revolves about the earth.  Man-made laws can be
significantly helpful but not when they contradict
fundamental truths.

Congress wisely decided long ago that mathematical things
cannot be patented.  Surely nobody could apply mathematics
if it were necessary to pay a license fee whenever the
theorem of Pythagoras is employed.  The basic algorithmic
ideas that people are now rushing to patent are so
fundamental, the result threatens to be like what would
happen if we allowed authors to have patents on individual
words and concepts.  Novelists or journalists would be
unable to write stories unless their publishers had
permission from the owners of the words.  Algorithms are
exactly as basic to software as words are to writers,
because they are the fundamental building blocks needed to
make interesting products.  What would happen if individual
lawyers could patent their methods of defense, or if Supreme
Court justices could patent their precedents?

I realize that the patent courts try their best to serve
society when they formulate patent law.  The Patent Office
has fulfilled this mission admirably with respect to aspects
of technology that involve concrete laws of physics rather
than abstract laws of thought.  I myself have a few patents
on hardware devices.  But I strongly believe that the recent
trend to patenting algorithms is of benefit only to a very
small number of attorneys and inventors, while it is
seriously harmful to the vast majority of people who want to
do useful things with computers.

When I think of the computer programs I require daily to get
my own work done, I cannot help but realize that none of
them would exist today if software patents had been
prevalent in the 1960s and 1970s. Changing the rules now
will have the effect of freezing progress at essentially its
current level.  If present trends continue, the only
recourse available to the majority of America's brilliant
software developers will be to give up software or to
emigrate.  The U.S.A. will soon lose its dominant position.

Please do what you can to reverse this alarming trend. There
are far better ways to protect the intellectual property
rights of software developers than to take away their right
to use fundamental building blocks.

Sincerely,
Donald E. Knuth
Professor Emeritus


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