🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <17359@watdragon.waterloo.edu> afscian@violet.waterloo.edu (Anthony Scian) writes:
>There are two distinct issues being addressed by patent (protectionist)
>debates: Patentable software (algorithms) and "look and feel".
>Imagine if the early computer pioneers placed the almighty dollar
>over advancing knowledge. LR(1) parsing or for that matter anything
>in the "dragon" book would be royalty costs for any language
>translator company. Let's leave patents to physical processes and
>techniques.

What makes physical processes so special?  Why is someone who figures out
that putting two gears together in a particular way does something useful
entitled to more protection than someone who discovers that putting two
gotos together in a particular way is useful?  They both have invented new
mechanisms, so they should be entitled to similar protection.

At the time LR(1) parsing was invented, software patentability was not very
well known.  Since then, many software patents have been granted: Ritchie
patented the Unix setuid mechanism (he has explicitly decided not to
enforce the patent), RSA patented their public-key encryption algorithm, I
think Apple has a patent on pull-down menus, and someone has a patent on
using XOR to implement a raster graphics cursor.

Another reason LR(1) parsing might not have been patentable is that it
might not be considered a novel and unobvious invention, or there might not
be any individual inventor.  I don't know the research processes that led
to it, but if it were the result of research throughout the industry, and
it was the natural result of that research, it might not be patentable --
in effect, the whole computer parsing research community invented it
together.

There are some people who don't believe that patent protection is
reasonable.  The notion that an independent inventor can be prevented from
marketing his idea simply because someone else who thought of the same
thing patented it seems unfair; patent law seems to assume that the
independent inventor stole the idea.  I can sympathize with this view.
However, I have little sympathy for those who distinguish hardware and
software engineers' patent rights.

>Suppose you prove a theorem. Would you like to see mathematics
>come to a stand-still while everybody protects their ideas?

Patents might allow you to protect the *mechanism* you used to prove the
theorem (if it were a novel technique), but not the theorem itself, which
is simply a universal truth.  The theorem could them be used by other
mathematicians to prove corollaries, but if there were other theorems
amenable to proof by your technique you could license the technique.
Mathematics would only come to a stand-still if everyone refused to pay the
license fees (in which case, the patent holder would probably not bother
charging it, since he's not making any money from it anyway -- there's not
much money in knowing how to prove a particular theorem all by itself).

>Besides, using your analogy you wouldn't be able to package the
>CD player in a similar manner to any of your competitors.
>(No ON-OFF switch, no LED display, no sliding platform, etc.)

Patent protection is not permitted for "obvious" inventions, and I expect
it is disallowed for designs that are mandated by industry standards.  I'm
sure most simple switches fall into these categories (even if not, most
switch designs are old enough that the patents have expired).  For example,
labeling an on-off switch with "1" and "0" is an ISO standard, so it could
hardly be patentable.  Given the existence of 7-segment digital LEDs, I
don't think anyone could get a patent on putting a bunch of them in a row
to represent a multi-digit number, but I imagine the original 7-segment LED
was patentable.
Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
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