Re: [Patents] You have rights.. Software Patents are Illegal

[Jonas Maebe <jonas.maebe@ugent.be>]

On 14 mei 2004, at 13:49, Flemming Bjerke wrote:

> Well, I did not say that. I just said that in a computer, there is 
> nothing but
> matter.

In a human mind as well. That why looking at the way something is 
represented in a particular context cannot be used to judge whether or 
not it's patentable subject matter, because in that case everything is 
patentable subject matter. You would have to allow patents on thought 
patterns if they are new, non-obvious and if you could make money with 
it.

> > You have to see the distinction with the means
> > with which the information is stored/processed, and the information
> > itself (which is completely independent of those means).
>
> But, in a computer, there is no such thing as information in itself.

"Information in itself" (as such? :) can never be in something, because 
information is non-corporeal and "something" is per definition 
corporeal.

> There is
> only information which is stored or processed - and it is matter.

And the means with which you process that matter is technology. That is 
completely independent from the information that this matter represents 
however. You cannot say that this matter processing is new or 
non-obvious, because it's not (the machine was built from the ground up 
to be able to do that and to be operated this way). The only thing 
that's possibly new or non-obvious is the information that it 
represents. But information is not patentable subject matter.

Just look at a book: all those letters on paper are clearly pure matter 
(ink). That doesn't mean that the story line the book is patentable 
subject matter (not even "a novel story line like this formatted in 
*new_special_way* and printed on paper with ink", even though that's 
clearly a technical process and may cause the printing machine to do 
some processing in an order it has never done before).


Jonas