Re: [Patents] newsscan: Software patent limits 'go too far'

[Simo Sorce <simo.sorce@xsec.it>]

On Tue, 2003-10-21 at 19:49, Gregory Aharonian wrote:

> There exists a growing number of software tools that translate C code
> into field programmable gate arrays netlists, i.e, convert C code
> directly into a specific circuit of AND, OR, NOT and higher level
> digital circuit components.  To that extent, I view C computer programs
> no different than I view digital hardware circuit diagrams - two
> different but logically equivalent ways of representing a specific
> machine.  And therefore both equally patentable.

Well, my answer is easy, I see no contraddiction.
When a program get translated into hardware parts by means of a
completely mechanical process I see no invention here. I see simply
translation of logic into yet another form of binary code.
So I think probably most of these processors have nothing new in them
only a composition of well known parts. So I  hardly see it as something
worth a patent. And anyway just in the cas ea processor made that way
teach something new abput controllable forces of nature, then it that
what's patented not the software by which the processor was made.

Your problem is that you think that ideas "as such" should be patented,
that's just absurd as it doesn't serve any useful purpose except making
some guy rich and society as a whole poorer.

Nothing the society as a whole should permit by law.

Simo.


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