Re: [Patents] The Importance of Potential (continued)

["Christian Beauprez" <beauprez@beauprez.fsnet.co.uk>]

Indeed you are quite right to say that a technical effect maybe realised by
the software. But does this make it an invention under invention law e.g. a
monopoly to produce based on the "invention"?

If we patented this we would be patenting an invention based on a broad
definition of "automated chemical laboraratory whereby technical effect is
realised by software" as opposed to protecting the code of the software
innovation itself.

When we get into this assumption the problem of the washing machine
re-emerges.

e.g. the washing machine that gets clothes cleaner by an implemented
algorithm. Is the person who wrote the software thereby the inventor of a
"software assisted washing machine" should they then inherit inventors
rights to the whole industry in the way that Acacia has inherited the
inventors rights of broadcasting audio and video over a network by means of
buffering etc.

> Not quite, because the novelty of the hardware operations might
> also be defined by use.  E.g. you might have a fully automated chemical
> laboratory running a program and thereby bringing a new combination of
> forces of nature together to cause a surprising effect.  The program for
> this is perhaps as simple as A + B = C but the chemistry is quite
> unrelated to it.  Yet you have a known chemical laboratory with a new
> program.