🚀 go-pugleaf

>Terry> I seriously doubt that a whole program could be
>Terry> patented effectively;
>
>Dan> I wonder if Zippy has ever heard of ``data compression.''
>
>Terry> I wonder if Danny has ever *looked* at those patents.  Say,
>Terry> Danny, do they happen to describe *an entire program*, or
>Terry> just the compression technique itself?	Or did you just
>Terry> miss the words "a whole program?"
>
Dan> The *entire* compress program can be considered a
Dan> ``compression and decompression system'' covered by the
Dan> LZW patent.  Zippy, are you thinking, or simply frothing
Dan> at the mouth?

Ease up, guy.  You're so busy insulting Terry, you embarrass
yourself by failing to read what he actually wrote.  Here's
what he *didn't* say: "A whole program cannot be covered by a
patent."  For some reason, you responded to this (imaginary)
statement.

What he actually argued was that it would be silly to patent
an entire program, because such a patent would afford no
protection to its inventor.  This is because people could
change non-essential aspects of the program to create a new
program with the same basic function, but without infringing
the patent.  In other words, if you patent an entire program,
you are, in effect, saying that *all aspects* of that program
are essential parts of your invention, when in fact that
notion is plainly silly.  (E.g., is stdio an "essential"
element of LZW compression?  Certainly not, even though
compress(1) uses stdio.  Therefore it would be useless to
patent compress(1), because people could write equivalent
LZW-based compression programs without stdio, which a patent
on compress(1) would not cover.)

This argument makes good sense to me.  Of course, I can't
comment one way or the other on the legal truth of it, since
I don't have the God-given authority on patent law that some
posters think they are blessed with.  I'm only writing this
because (a) it's obvious you missed Terry's point, (b) *your*
mistake has given you the idea that he said something stupid,
(c) you've decided this gives you a chance to sling mud (as
in, "frothing at the mouth").

Dan> United States Patent 338029 covers not only software but
Dan> an entire algorithm. It is clearly worded to cover that
Dan> algorithm. It was granted in 1968.

Is that number right?  Seems like maybe it needs another
digit.	What invention does it cover?

Jesse Perry   jesse@franklin.com   uunet!frnkmth!jesse