Patent 5,893,120 Reduced To Pure Math 323
An anonymous reader writes "US Patent #5,893,120 has been reduced to mathematical formulae as a demonstration of the oft-ignored fact that there is an equivalence relation between programs and mathematics. You may recognize Patent #5,893,210 as the one over which Google was ordered to pay $5M for infringing due to some code in Linux. It should be interesting to see how legal fiction will deal with this. Will Lambda calculus no longer be 'math'? Or will they just decide to fix the inconsistency and make mathematics patentable?"
not relevant if reducible to mathmatics. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:not relevant if reducible to mathmatics. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:not relevant if reducible to mathmatics. (Score:5, Interesting)
It is the central problem of allowing software patents. I think the parent has described why software patents are absurd as concisely as I have ever seen it done. In essence we're allowing the patenting of algorithms, which are at heart pure math. We are allowing the patenting of mathematics, because judges and juries are too fucking incompetent to understand the very basis of computational science. A fraud has been perpetrated on the legal systems of many countries, but rather than throw every single person who has sought a software patent in prison for fraud, we in fact reward them by permitting them to extort money. It's a travesty that very shortly is going to bring the entire industry to its knees. Once you start going after garbage-collected hash tables and refuse to recognize that such techniques are decades old, no one could hope to implement any kind of operating system or virtual machine or, fuck, most interpreters, without risking ending up having their asses sued off.
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But mechanical patents fall into the same category. Aren't all mechanical patents at it's heart, physics, which is any number of different mathematical fields? What about chemical patents?
But you're right that the danger of software patents, and as I stated above, well, any sort of patent is that our system isn't designed to handle our modern, robust(well, relative compared to our patent law) field of science and math.
The problem is our patent system but the solution isn't to throw it out and go entirely
Re:not relevant if reducible to mathmatics. (Score:5, Insightful)
Last thing I'd want to do is come up with some whizbang unpatented compression technique, only to find out some MegaMondoCorp has turned it into a multi-billion dollar product leaving me in the dust. on the other hand, I don't want to be sued because my for loop looks too similar to some code sitting in some code base unused for 20 years.
so you want to both have your cake and eat it too?
to be protected yourself but have the ability to go after others?
as it stands it's impossible to tell with certainty if you've violated one of the millions of patents out there as the problem is functionally equivalent to the halting problem.
so you build your lovely wizzbang application and make a profit and someone can swoop in and take it all away over a patent you have not a chance in hell of finding.
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Yeah, what's so wrong with that?
What's wrong with advocating for a moderate solution where in large scale concepts and innovations like entirely new algorithms to perform tasks related to commercial grade software would be protected, but, also disallow abuse by those who would make it their entire business model to abuse the system?
I never thought moderatism was extremist.
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Because 1) This idea has been patented however 2) No one has ever managed to reduce it to practice, in any field. The typical result of attempting the "moderate" solution is a system which has all the disadv
Usable product = patent? What a novel idea! (Score:3)
I have to agree. I think we need to go back to at least requiring an implementation of a patent in order to grant it.
Fear of patents shouldn't be a reason to NOT do something.
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any groups who do research but don't have a factory producing would also get swept up.
Requiring that they have at least 1 working example would be a big improvement but requiring product sales just hurts legit R&D outfits.
The patent trolls would keep on trolling, the ones which actually have any kind of working implementation of any form would just sell one unit to the company owners son.
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Except that Edison wasn't the only or the first person to have the idea. He wasn't even the first one to prototype a working bulb. He was just the first one to make them last long enough to be practical.
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Well that's just it, really. A mechanical patent on a.. let's say a crane. That patent is on *that crane*, of *that design*. It does not apply to all devices by which loads may be lifted, it only applies to those that use the particular sort of device described by the patent.
In other words, patenting the use of pulleys and such to create a mechanical advantage for lifting heavy crap? Not gonna fly. Patenting a particular design of pulleys? That's cool, but someone else can make a crane of their own d
Re:not relevant if reducible to mathmatics. (Score:4, Insightful)
What this looks like is more akin to patenting the use of gravity to carry an object downward. You.. you can't fucking do that. That's absurd.
Exactly.
I feel like the problem is that software has no real physical constraints. When you invent a new kind of brake for a car, it has physical characteristics. Maybe the materials are less expensive, or light weight, or they allow the car to slow down faster, or don't fade as quickly, or don't wear out as quickly, etc. Anyone else can come up with a new kind of brake design, but their design won't have the same characteristics, and if the patented design has advantages over the alternatives then the patent is worth something.
The problem with software is that those kind of constraints just don't exist. If two implementations have the same function, that's all anyone cares about. The cost of producing another instance of the software is zero, the bits never wear out, etc. In theory some implementations may use less CPU or memory than others, but in the large majority of cases the difference is not enough to care about. So the problem with patenting software is that unless you can get some incredibly overbroad claims that basically cover any possible way of doing the same thing, the patent can be trivially avoided because alternative implementations have no material disadvantage over the patented ones. But a patent on all possible ways of doing something gives the patent holder more than he deserves and causes all of the problems we see with software patents.
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I don't think it will necessarily bring the industry to its knees (patent trolls notwithstanding). What it does is require that you have a certain amount of capital before you can write software. In other words, only big companies will be able to write software. I believe this is the intent of the current software patent system. The interesting thing is that patent trolls, as much as we might hate them, throw a wrench into this scenario. If large compaies use software patents in some MAD plot to keep u
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Many people these days would say that humans are (biological) machines, so it's not clear if that would mean people couldn't run patented algorithms in their heads. Even if you ignore that obvious case, the boundaries of what constitutes a machine are extremely fuzzy. Just think of the variety of computers we have: there are silicon based computers, analog computers, quantum computers, molecular computers, etc.
We're better off fighting
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Such a patent should be valid if the device's only function is to perform the software and nothing more (or the device is performing the software to archive one goal). But if the software is run by a general computer, than you can't patent the computer.
The lawyers try to tell then the computer is somehow magically transformed by the running software into a device that can be patented. And that is the main problem with software patents that you get a patent that covers every possible devices, existing and fu
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a software patent might be valid if it contains "a mathematical formula [and] implements or applies the formula in a structure or process which, when considered as a whole, is performing a function which the patent laws were designed to protect"
I wonder if they ever heard anything about the Curry-Howard isomorphism? And what do they mean by "a structure or process"? A formula of the untyped lambda-calculus? A formula of the untyped lambda-calculus plus the conversion rules? A formula of the pi-calculus? An implementation of this formula on a physical machine? How do they determine when two computable functions are equivalent? LOL, by the functions having the same graph? (Hopefully not...)
How do they know when two algorithms are identical w
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Fallacy of composition, people. Its like making the argument "This chair is of wood, which came from trees, and you can't patent a tree, therefore you can't patent this chair!". Just because all software is reducible to math doesn't mean you can't patent some of it. This is as likely to open the door to patenting mathematics as making chairs will open the door to patenting trees.
Actually this just shows you don't understand programming. The inherent nature of a chair is not a tree. The inherent nature of a program/programming language IS its semantics, which is defined mathematically if you have any desire to be rigorous (and aren't patents supposed to be precise?). The only rigorous definition of a program is a mathematical equation.
David Gay
PS: Lookup axiomatic, denotational or operational semantics for details.
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What you are not understanding is that the law is not a machine, nor is it like mathematics. The law relates to humans and human conceptions of the world. It's irrelevant to human conceptions of patents and algorithms that programming is inherently reducible to mathematics; what is important is the law as it is understood by humans, and how that law is interpreted to apply to any given situation. If most people consider an algorithm to not to come under the mathematical exception, then, for the purposes of
Re:not relevant if reducible to mathmatics. (Score:4, Funny)
I'm pretty sure Monsanto has at least one patent on a tree.
So? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Politics has been indisturbed by the facts of the real world for as long as history allows us to judge. All you have to do is look beyond the Solons, Washingtons or whatever your countrys famous politicians are - the day-to-day dealings of politics is a horrible mess and always has been, and things like truth, fact or evidence are way down the list of things to worry about.
The judicial branch is often quite a bit more pragmatic, but also caught up in its own world. The most important problem being that they try hard to be consistent, so change is hard to get. Once a higher court has decided on an interpretation of law, the lower courts usually don't disagree too much, and it requires a new case with new facts to get everyone to revisit the decision.
Which is cool because it means good decisions stand and aren't easily challenged just because you have a lot of money. The problem is that it takes considerable time to get rid of bad decisions. In the long run, the system works very well, but in the short run, it often fails when new facts, ideas, technologies, etc. are involved.
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But I'm not a society, I'm a person, so it makes no sense for me to support rules which only benefit society as such. The same is true for every politician, voter, businessperson, etc. Thus, the rules which only benefit society as such can't be created by individuals, they need to arise spontaneously - or, in other words, they need to be created by society as such.
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If changing variable names is all it takes to dodge a patent, that makes software patents pretty worthless. The names of variables are completely irrelevant to the actual execution of the program, so there's nothing stopping anyone from scrubbing their code with a refactoring tool to change those names. Having different names doesn't magically make your program do something else.
You cannot possibly be correct in your assertion.
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Well, if lambda calculus, pi calculus, the Actor model, and so on have nothing do with software patents, then I'd really like to know what prevents someone from translating those "names" into something else entirely, which be done automatically, and thereby easily nullify any software patent. That would be great.
You see, the real problem with software patents is that there is no working definition of the sameness of algorithms, recipes, programs, or however you call it, that is both working in practice, the
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Software_is_math (Score:5, Insightful)
I've collected various examples of this argument here:
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Software_is_math [swpat.org]
However, you have to remember that this is *not* the end of the discussion (or at best, this will result in this one patent getting invalidated or narrowed).
When faced with "software=math" arguments, judges still argue that *applications* of math to real world problems can be patentable.
What we need is legislation saying that writing, distributing, selling, and using software cannot constitute a patent violation.
Not sure I understand this argument at all (Score:3)
Sure, software is math. I'll accept the point as stated.
Likewise, books are language. Can books be copyrighted? No one owns language.
A power drill is metal and plastic. Can a power drill be patented, then?
Patents aren't limited to ideas that have never been remotely observed before in all of human existence. You patent innovations. Many innovations are incremental, probably even the vast majority of them. I don't see how saying "but that's just math" invalidates the significance of a particular innovation.
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I'm not a fan of software=math arguments, but an example of their value is in the US Supreme Court's "Flook" ruling:
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Parker_v._Flook_(1978,_USA) [swpat.org]
That's the starting point I'd use if I had to argue based on software being math, but I'd rather not rely on that.
Being equal to math isn't the reason why software patents are a problem for society. Blocking software development, forcing incompatibility, stifling competition, and being incompatible with the development models (lots of individ
Re:Not sure I understand this argument at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, software is math. I'll accept the point as stated.
Likewise, books are language. Can books be copyrighted? No one owns language.
Wrong. Words, when put together, form sentences which form paragraphs which form stories, which in turn can be copyrighted. But stories are not paragraphs, paragraphs are not sentences, and sentences are not words so the fact that words cannot be copyrighted by itself is not relevant to stories.
Mathematical formulae however, when put together they're still formulae, merely a longer (and probably more descriptive) one, and mathematical formulae cannot be copyrighted or patented.
There's a big difference between saying "you could probably do that with a computer" and actually doing it with a computer, which is what a software patent would cover.
Except this isn't saying "you could probably do that with a computer", this is saying "you can do that with a computer like this". Allowing software patents but denying math is much like allowing copyright over hexadecimal numbers but disallowing it for decimals: there exist a way to transform one into the other that's formally proven to work for any and all elements of either set, so anything that works for members of one set *must* work for the other and to declare otherwise is to automatically fall into a contradiction. If you'd study Math or CS it'd be much clearer as to how and why, if you must know, but that's kind of outside the context of this post.
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You actually brought up something I've wondered about: When Sony, or the DVD consortium, or whoever it is *this* time start crying about the release of their respective signing key and claiming copyright to the number, why not just start representing it in decimal, or as the multiple of two primes, or some other form that is clearly not subject to copyright/patent?
For exqample, the so called "09 F9" AACS key is 13,256,278,887,989,457,651,018,865,901,401,704,640, so that decimal number in and of itself is n
Re:Not sure I understand this argument at all (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody is arguing against protecting a specific implementation of an algorithm (although copyright already provides this protection).
The problem is that when you patent an algorithm, you don't just patent that expression of that idea, like you do with a book or a power drill. You patent all the expressions of that idea. It would be like writing a book on some topic, and then owning the rights to all books on that topic until the patent runs out. You own a whole chunk of the language, every possible expression of you idea, not just the particular one you came up with.
Likewise, when you patent an algorithm, you have patented an entire (admittedly fairly confined) branch of mathematics, having to do with expressions of that algorithm. This is distasteful, and, as the current software patent climate has shown, has terrible chilling effects on the software industry as a whole.
Re:Not sure I understand this argument at all (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a difference. Copyright covers only the specific expression. Patents cover the whole idea.
For example, the copyright on Harry Potter covers the story on Harry Potter, and derived works. A patent on Harry Potter OTOH could look like this:
Claims: ...
1. A story about a normal, underprivileged boy who turns out to be special.
2. As 1, where the specialty is that he actually is the son of a magician.
3. As 1, where the boy lives in England.
4. As 2, where the boy himself gets educated in magic.
You see, it would cover a lot of possible books, most of which would have very little relation to Harry Potter. Even worse, it would even apply to books of authors who never heard of Harry Potter (unlikely in case of Harry Potter, but the same would be true for quite obscure books as well). Or imagine that someone else had filed such a patent before, without actually writing such a book, then Harry Potter would not have been a success story, but a nightmare for J. K. Rowling.
Patents have to be much stricter in what they can be applied to because they are much broader in scope.
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Sorry, no mod points
Re:Not sure I understand this argument at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright covers only the specific expression.
This was long one of the cornerstones of US copyright law. You must have been in a Rip van Winkle nap while that principle was being excised from the law by clever judges over the last few decades. Sadly, you can't even write a completely novel imagining of an older Holden Caulfield's behaviour without falling afoul of the current 'copyright' case law.
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Rowling made so much money off the Potter series that even if she had been sued successfully for patent infringement, she still would have come out stinking rich...
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You can derive mathematics in isolation. Case in point, many mathematic proofs and "discoveries" have been done independently and simultaneously (namely differential calculus with Newton and Leibniz).
You cannot, however, "derive" a book or end up with the exact same arrangement of words, apart from chance. Likewise, your drill will not have the same configuration, elements, inner workings, etc. It'll be different enough to be considered unique in its own right.
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Whereas, as you rightly point out, a copyrighted work will not, due to the laws of probability, be duplicated without copying it, such is hardly the case for an invention like a drill, as so many have to their chagrin discovered.
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Your book example is a failure, because you switched which variety of IP you were talking about.
Software should fall under either copyright or patent, not both. Personally, I'd favor copyright despite it's ridiculously long terms, simply on the whole "pure math isn't patentable. software is an expression of math in a machine readable form, and nothing else; therefore, it should not be patentable."
Let me put it this way, if I added "in French" to something that was explicitly not patentable, it would not m
yes, abolish software patents. (Score:4, Insightful)
If software developers are prohibited from decoding your video format, the result is incompatibility.
Some people would indeed love to have a monopoly, and would spend millions for it, but these monopolies are simply not in the public interest. They're impeding software development and blocking interoperability.
There are more reasons here:
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Why_abolish_software_patents [swpat.org]
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Many of us...
Oh, spare us... even if you were responsible for "spend[ing] millions on algorithm research" you'd know that if all you had boiled down to mathematics you didn't have a product at all. Patentable inventions are (read: should be) the things that are unique and inventive implementations of physical and mathematical concepts*. I'm not going to address the OP but your argument was so weak that I couldn't resist responding to it.
* The fact that one plus one makes two is obvious and cannot be seen as inventive, b
TRIPS is no problem (Score:3)
> Unfortunately, this is not allowed under TRIPS.
TRIPS is no problem. TRIPS says that computer programs are to be considered literary works.
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/TRIPS [swpat.org]
TRIPS says that patents have to be granted for inventions in "any field of technology", but there's no definition of this term, and if computer programs are literature and stories aren't patentable, then computer programs are not patentable under TRIPS.
Further, a general principal of law is that international treaties that restrict sove
irrelevant (Score:2)
Yes, the mathematical formula is not patentable, and you can compute with it all you like. But when you actually apply it to perform information retrieval in a physical computer, then the patent applies.
I'm not saying that the patent is valid (there is tons of prior art), or that such a distinction ought to be made. But it is certainly a distinction one can make.
And if people keep insisting that such a distinction is meaningless, it is more likely that the patentability exclusion for mathematical formulas
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As compared to the Manhattan Project... (Score:3)
I'm pretty sure that in the late 1930s, the process to make Little Boy and Fat Man would have been patentable under any purview that considered any kind of patents to be valid.
And, in the end, all they are is the bringing together of big lumps of elementary material, albeit highly refined from what is found in nature, to bring about a reaction that, itself (after decades of study), can now be reduced to a set of mathematical equations.
As for software patents, some wiener patented the use of XOR to draw a cursor... if that can stand, why not anything else, like one-click order taking?
I truly hope we have hit bottom of the patent well, but I'm sure there's an army of attorneys out there willing to dig with ever sharper tools.
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I'm pretty sure that in the late 1930s, the process to make Little Boy and Fat Man would have been patentable under any purview that considered any kind of patents to be valid.
They were patented by Leo Szilard, US government stole/took over for free those patents and screwed the inventor.
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That is a horribly ignorant way to look at it. Physical materials - even relatively simple ones like base elements - cannot be simply described as a mathematical value. You can say "Oh, it's element___ with this many protons, neutrons, electrons, quarks, leptons, etc" but you'd still be leaving out a MASSIVE amount of data which would be required to completely describe(mathematically) the object's form and composition.
This is as opposed to trying to patent the chemical chain reaction equation of Uranium, Pl
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How is bringing together material and build something is math? Do you know what it means to build something? You have get a hammer and screwdriver in your hand and put nails or screws into holes and you have to cut metal or wood. In the end you have some device, a product, which either works or not.
Math is just a bunch of formula on the paper with freely defined meaning. There is no device, no product at the end. It doesn't work and it can't work because it's just formula on the paper. The same is with soft
The thing is (Score:2)
There is a very thin line between "a lot of mathematic formulas" and an algorithm. For example, the AES encryption algorithm can be written down as a very complex set of mathematical equations.
And it is, of course, patentable. Because, for the purposes of patents, there are no real differences between algorithm/method and technique/technology.
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A really simple argument: (Score:2)
When you create software, what do you do?
Do you write software or do you make software?
I think that is the fundamental question that needs to be asked. If you make it, it should be patented. If you write it it should be copyrighted. The issue here is that the software industry (in part) wants to go double-dipping.
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Sure. The first person who did something innovative with sculpture - like, say, creating a method and product where interlocking pieces of wood are created in sculpture by carving them out of a single piece - would be patentable. 3000 years ago.
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When you write software, the particular implementation in source code is copyrightable. You may implement an idea in the public domain as source code and copyright the source code, and I cannot copy your source code and sell it. I can implement the same idea in my own source code and copyright my source code.
The method that an algorithm uses may be patentable. If I patent an algorithm I can require that you pay me a licensing fee to write and sell software that uses the algorithm.
The real problem with softw
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For an idea to be patentable, it should not be obvious to someone skilled in that technical area.
Sounds like an incredibly shaky, arbitrary foundation upon which to build a system. I'd like to see someone come up with concrete, objective definitions of "obvious" and "technical area".
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I do both, I first write it then I build it !
Has anybody asked why.... (Score:2)
I mean, really, what is the reason behind it?
Because if, in fact, there is a legitimate answer to that question, then it *MUST* follow that any patent that can be shown to be isomorphic to a sequence of math operations should reasonably be rendered invalid on that basis, and no other.
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Is that your assertion?
So? (Score:2)
RSA crypto can be reduced to pure math. JPEG, MPEG 2 layer 3 audio encoding, ditto, etc.
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The code the responsible companies wrote for these technologies should be patentable(which for something written is called Copyright) - so you can not make a verbatim copy and sell it as your own - but they should not be truly patentable any more than a book is.
If I write patented code in a novel as something a hacker character came up with, but it doesn't actually run on a computer or do anything(as it is printed on a page of a book) then should you be able to come after me for a patent violation? No. You
Same patent? (Score:2)
Are we talking about the same patent or is there a misprint here? The two numbers are not the same.
Not actually reduced to math (Score:4, Informative)
I am an attorney & patent agent and I hold multiple degrees in mathematics and computer science, so I feel fairly competent to speak on this issue.
The claims require a physical implementation (e.g. "An information storage and retrieval system"). No amount of math will produce such a system out of the aether. Nor does thinking about the math or the formulas on pen & paper infringe the patent. The specification makes it clear that "information storage and retrieval system" refers to a computer system. Thus, the patent was not actually reduced to pure mathematics.
The nonpatentability of mathematics refers literally to patenting a formula or algorithm without any useful application, just as chemical elements cannot be patented but a mechanical device made entirely of a single element could be. A claim to a bare formula would be invalid for lack of utility as well as lack of patentable subject matter. Consequently, the Curry-Howard Correspondence has no effect on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions.
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But according to that argument, if I write a program that does this and distribute that program, I should not be violating the patent, because I'm not distributing "an information and storage retrieval system", right?
Re:Not actually reduced to math (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that the patent office considers this an "invention" is an absurd technicality. Maybe you can technically twist the letter of the law to fit the idea of a patent on a software technique, but at that point you've completely abandoned the spirit of the law. While the judicial system is busy tangling over fine points of language, America's technological industries are going to hell in a hand basket. Unless you're a massive multinational corporation, good luck trying to implement any useful software without using at least a couple dozen "novel" computational techniques from the last two decades...
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Maybe you right but than the patent should not be granted. "An information storage and retrieval system" is just too broad. That covers everything from a computer to the human brain to paper and pen. It's like a patent on an automobile which just needs "a horseless power that can move a carriage". Or a television with just needs "a screen that can display images".
So patent claim should be specific to one device. You can't just say "something+human interface device" and claim a patent for it. That's just my
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Re:Not actually reduced to math (Score:4, Interesting)
When discussing the issue of software patents, one always refers to "computer system" implementations. Since the domain has already been selected it is perfectly acceptable to claim that the basis of a software patent can be reduced to pure mathematics without refuting your argument.
If you outlaw patents for math ... (Score:2)
Patent Law Explained (Score:5, Informative)
All of patent law deals with interpretations, most of which are involve varying degrees of subtly.
The Federal Circuit Court has provided a great deal of well-written guidance. This particularly applies to what is and is not patentable.
The issue of what is and is not patentable is not black and white, such as, “mathematical formulas are not patentable,” or “software is patentable.”
A process that creates something useful and tangible is patentable, whether or not that process involves a calculation. What is not patentable is a “pure” formula that is not tied to something tangible. Data structures are tricky. The newer rules (yes, lots of mistakes were made in the past) are that generalized data structures, such as a table or a linked list, do not count as “tangible.” However, if those data structures are used (critically) to perform useful work, such as to refine steel or to serve up ads on websites, then the ENTIRE process is patentable. Subject, of course to all the other restrictions, such as non-obviousness.
These rules are not really new. They are the same rules that apply to mechanical inventions. For example, you cannot patent a “law of nature,” even it is something complex and nobody else knew about it. You can, however, patent a new device that takes advantage of this law of nature. For example, you cannot patent super-conductivity, but you can patent a useful device that uses super-conductivity.
Even mechanical inventions could be reduced to equations. CAD systems and hardware description languages are such examples. However, these “mathematical” representations have no bearing on the patentability.
Thus, the “deaf ears” referred to are those practitioners in the field who are following well-established law.
You don’t have to like current patent law. Many people don’t. European rules, for example, are different that ours. Note that not liking is distinct from not understanding.
- Registered Patent Agent
Re:Patent Law Explained (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually you make a few mistakes. Most importantly, under US law at least, mathematics IS NOT patentable.
Furthermore software patents are NOT properly analogous to 'mechanical inventions [which] could be reduced to equations' - most obviously because no mechanical invention can actually be reduced to equations. It may *involve* equations, it may be *describable* in equations, certainly, but if it is *reducible* to equations then it is pure math and not patentable.
Judges and patent examiners may be permitting patents on pure math to issue, but they are doing so in *ignorance* because they dont understand the subject matter, not because the law actually allows it.
Old news (Score:4, Insightful)
If we required all software patents be Haskell... (Score:2)
We could look them up with Hoogle [haskell.org] or Hayoo [fh-wedel.de] API searches.
*And* you'd have a huge bank of open source software coming available as they expired.
The RSA Patent was pretty much pure math too... (Score:2)
Please no. (Score:2)
...Or will they just decide to fix the inconsistency and make mathematics patentable?
Please no. I know this was tongue-in-cheek but I honestly wouldn't be surprised. Please, please no.
Patentable Mathematics ain't possible.... (Score:2)
Mathematics well about 99.999% of the math in use today is prior art that is over 100 years old. High level...theoretical mathematics typically only has a practical and applied science/economic purpose/use...value centuries later.
Also, saying someone has a legal right to a type of math/equation or theory is like saying someone owns all humans (...insanity/silly). Anyone can do 2+2..., if a SCO, Dell, Oracle, CN, EU, TW, US mathematician uses math, there is no reasonable way to say "I DID IT FIRST" or last
Re:This doesn't change anything (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:This doesn't change anything (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This doesn't change anything (Score:4, Informative)
The device is not what is patented. If you build a device out of metal and that device is covered by a patent, and then I make a device using the same plans but I make mine out of wood, it uses the patented idea. Similarly, I can write an algorithm in C or Fortran, and no matter which I use if the algorithm is patented both pieces of source code use the patented idea. It's the idea of how to construct the device which is patented. Otherwise, a trivial way to get around any patent would be to build a minimally different device.
This is actually what happens in the pharmaceutical industry. If a drug is patented, the molecule itself is patented. If someone makes any change to the molecule, no matter how slight, the new molecule is not covered by the patent.
Wood/metal, still the same device? (Score:4, Interesting)
The Metal/Wood thing is something that the courts could get into, but the general argument in such a case is that they are effectively the same device.
But I'll admit that it is sort of the same argument. In order for a device to not be infringing despite doing the same task it would have to do the task via a different method, and the question comes in whether said method is different enough.
Personally I like the idea of making them come up with an actual device or implementation because I think it'd keep the patent trolls down - things like force feedback joysticks being held back for years because a company that has never produced one holds some patent on it; sure, they'll offer a license, but no technological help. They might of patented the idea of a control mechanism with a feedback loop, but they didn't do anything else to actually develop it.
Another one I remember has something to do with social media sites - and the company that did the patent doesn't run a social media site.
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"You can reduce any algorithm to a physical device that implements the algorithm."
O RLY? Here's my algorithm:
1. Build a device, call it Larry
2. Bend the universe as a demonstration of what Larry should do.
3. Sell this universe to another universe, also as a demonstration of what Larry should do.
4. Deposit proceeds into a my offshore account. Explain to Larry that this step is very important.
5. Make sure Larry knows that, for every 5th loop, he's to build a Larry clone which does this recursively, instead
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That's why patents used to require a physical demonstration. Ideas were all well and good, but until you demonstrated a physical device that acted like the patent claimed, you could not get it patented.
And oddly enough, dozens of "working" perpetuum mobiles were patented. Anything proving that they couldn't work could and can not be patented.
Re:This will ruin my day... (Score:4, Insightful)
what's the point of even going to university if the end result is discovering that your idea has already been patented ages ago.
Well, if your goal is to create innovative new work, I imagine the point of going to university is learning what has been done before.
On the other hand, if you enroll in an undergraduate program with an amazing, brilliant idea in your head, only to discover that it had already been patented ages ago, maybe it's a wake-up call that you aren't the most brilliant person ever born, after all, and that you still have some studying to do.
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what's the point of even going to university if the end result is discovering that your idea has already been patented ages ago.
Well, if your goal is to create innovative new work, I imagine the point of going to university is learning what has been done before.
On the other hand, if you enroll in an undergraduate program with an amazing, brilliant idea in your head, only to discover that it had already been patented ages ago, maybe it's a wake-up call that you aren't the most brilliant person ever born, after all, and that you still have some studying to do.
On the other hand, If your goal is to create your own software using your own ideas while ignoring the whole field of CS research, prior art and patents as their information is not accessible to you, and it matters not if wheels get re-invented because you are inventing them to learn how they work: The patent system can and will prevent you from profiting from your original works.
I was exposed to computers at a young age (7?) I taught myself BASIC on the Apple IIe, and on an IBM 386. Learning things by
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Real engineers go to university too, you know, and the point in going is to learn the skills one needs to come up with one's own ideas and to articulate/instantiate them.
Baiting aside, the argument that software patents make a degree in the computer sciences worthless isn't why people are so up in arms about them. The problem is that comp. sci. can cover areas exempt from patents - like mathematics - and other areas that are subject to patent law. For my two penneth, legislators have drawn the line too far
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You accidentally linked to one of your home movies. Is that you on the bed? It certainly looks like a huge asshole.
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DO NOT CLICK ON THE ABOVE LINK.
No problem. I don't click links on /. that use URL shorteners.
This isn't Tweeter; we don't need shorteners. It would be nice if we could have Unicode though. Are you doing something about this, Taco?
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Yeah, your Lambda Calculus classes at your friendly neighbor University.
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Sorry, but I'm not familiar with "if" in math. What's the symbol for "if"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Displaying_a_formula#Continuation_and_cases [wikipedia.org]
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Its typically presented as the implication symbol or rule in languages such as Mathematica (->), which can refer to a variety of functions, although is actually more general than the concept of function since they may be multivalued for a given element of the domain. You can think of it as a relation that will be true or false depending upon the elements that make up the input and their "relation" to the elements that make up the output. a -> b will be true if an element a or an element in a set a im
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But that's the point. There aren't any "pure" formulae in the article. It's all pseudocode. Show me the _pure_mathematical_function_ that is patent 120. If someone doesn't understand English, they should still be able to look at a math function and understand it. The article fails that test, and as such I can't call it a math function.
Re:Math? (Score:4, Informative)
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Yes, you are missing something. Concepts such as "if" imply that the range of outcomes is different over different elements of the domain of the universe of all possible inputs. If statements are in essence equivalent to distinguishing between outcomes or range within or outside of a given portion of the entire universe of possible outcomes. Hence, an if statement will be true or false depending upon whether the elements within the domain of elements implied (or defined) by the statement fall within or o
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Piecewise functions are a good example, but the concept can be applied to continuous functions as well. The issue is how the domain and range of the relations are defined.