🚀 go-pugleaf

Did I stumble into alt.politics by accident here? I've been reading this
newsgroup for a few weeks now thinking I might actually learn something.
I must admit I have read some enlightening postings concerning patents.
But the majority of the traffic here is leftist claptrap propaganda about
how the sky will fall down if we allow software patents.  This alarmist
stuff is getting old.  For those who have that free software/I'm a
programmer I do as I like/let everybody own all software
communally/socialist/leftist intellectual bent to this subject I suggest
you wake up and smell the coffee -- you guys are in the minuscule
minority of the population who:
1) cares about programmers
2) cares about programmers having the freedom to write a computer program
 anyway they want.

For 99.99999% of the US population what is important is that when someone
creates or invents something, the inventor can protect that creation
through the legal process so that others don't steal the result of his
ingenuity.  This result gives people the incentive to create, invent,
produce, etc.  Call it capitalistic greed, conservatism, whatever.  But
thats what the United States copyright and patent systems are based on.
Its worked for over 200 years and look where our country is
technologically because of it.  So I seriously doubt that a handful of
academics arguing about patentable subject matter is really going to
influence the status quo without a more credible and compelling position.
The sky is falling tactic will not change the bureacratic inertia of the
PTO and the CAFC.

Instead can we discuss things like:

Does anybody know about the Doctrine of Equivalents ever being applied
to a hardware/software configuration?  Like if I have a hardware suite
that is patented, would I be infringing under the doctrine if I replace
some portion of the hardware with firmware or software?

Comments? Questions? Flames?