Re: [Patents] Cryptographic patent... and research.

[Hartmut Pilch <phm@a2e.de>]

> But if patent are granted for ABS, then he don't understand why they
> should not be granted for "methode".

That's a big like saying "If GW Bush can become president of the US, I
don't see why I shouldn't be president of Belgium".

I wouldn't argue that patents must be granted for ABS or that GWB must be
president, but some line needs to be drawn.

> And he was explicitly talking about RSA saying that it took brillant
> mind years do discover something that changed completely the shape of
> cryptography.

Still it probably just came as an unexpected inspiration rather than as a
result of an investment which could somehow be compared to the classical
case of big pharma research investments.

> He wanted for those who discovered RSA some "protection".

Some "protection" exists in that it is not so easy for others to learn and
imitate quickly.  If more is needed, one could design it.  Such a need is
not a reason for "letting the wolf into the room".  The wolf (patent
system) will not follow or adapt to the protection desires of a computer
scientists but has an independent life and appetite of his own.

> I can understand that MP3 compression tell us something about the force
> of nature since the filtering of sound that human do not hear is not
> something that can be done without real testing.

MP3 hardly tells us anything about *controllable* forces of nature, e.g.
soundwaves, but, at best, about the psychology of hearing.

If you look at the claims in the MP3-related patents, as listed at

        http://swpat.ffii.org/patents/effects/mpeg/

you may moreover find them not so different, e.g.

        EP 954909
        http://swpat.ffii.org/patents/txt/ep/0954/909/

   A method for coding an audio signal, comprising the
   following steps: transforming a temporal audio signal to the frequency
   domain in order to obtain spectral values of the temporal audio
   signal; performing a prediction of the spectral values in relation to
   frequency in order to obtain spectral residual values; detecting noise
   areas in the spectral residual values; noise-substituting the spectral
   residual values in the noise areas; and introducing information
   concerning the noise areas and the noise-substitution in side
   information of a coded audio signal.

Terms like "spectral value" or "audio signal" or "noise" refer at best to
abstractions from something physical.

The above claim seems as abstract, broad and trivial as that of any
software patents.  Non-trivial innovations lead to trivial and broad
patents.  In MP3, about 39 of them need to be licensed.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-18979927
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
155,000 votes 2000 firms against software patents    http://noepatents.org/