Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucsd!orion.oac.uci.edu!ucivax!ics!kolender From: kolender@ics.uci.edu (Kurt Olender) Newsgroups: trial.misc.legal.software Subject: Re: Patents (was Re: Copyrights) Message-ID: Date: 7 Aug 90 17:36:45 GMT References: <1990Jul27.014947.19528@hellgate.utah.edu> > <2096:Jul2900:53:4390@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <9492@goofy.Apple.COM> <1990Aug01.022905.26807@l Organization: ICS Dept, UC Irvine Lines: 36 Nntp-Posting-Host: gambetta.ics.uci.edu In-reply-to: brad@looking.on.ca's message of 4 Aug 90 03:17:21 GMT In article <1990Aug04.031721.23238@looking.on.ca> brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes: I fail to see the difference between in the human mind and outside the human mind. I can envison many patented physical processes and devices in my mind, and even perform gedankenexperimenten with them. Say you perform a gedanken experiment with the chemical process used to produce Teflon. In the end you still don't have any Teflon. You haven't violated the patent because you don't have a useful result and that in the end is the basis of a patent. You must get a useful result. If you use a patented process in some way other than the patented useful result, you don't violate the patent. Now execute Gaussian elimination in your head on a system of simultaneous equations that describes the constraints under which your business can make a profit. You have a useful result. Likewise I can implement computer algorithms in real world hardware. True. But then the physical device is patented, not the algorithm. No one else can build a similar chip for 17 years. But they can use the algorithm in other ways. If Gauss could patent gaussian elmination (and he couldn't if you could really do it in your head without having been told how in advance) so what? The patent would have expired long ago. Many other things have been patented with exactly the same constraints. That's not the point either. Substitute some other useful computational algorithm invented sometime in the past 5 years instead if you prefer. Suppose Frobnob's computational algorithm (since you object to my use of Gauss) is patented and the patent is still in effect. You can't teach it without executing it. You can't execute it (even in your own mind) without paying a license fee since if you do you are producing a useful result from a patented process.