🚀 go-pugleaf

Dan writes:
>In article <1991Sep11.183031.850@franklin.com> Jesse Perry writes:
>> 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.
>
>Sorry, but you're wrong.  The LZW patent....

No.  We're not talking about the LZW patent; that patent was
done sensibly.	What we're talking about is the fact that it
would be stupid to write a patent *the other way* -- a patent
on a specific program, as opposed to the LZW patent, which is
a patent on a *method*, and therefore applicable to any program
using that method.

This is exactly Terry's point, as I tried to explain earlier.
The LZW patent is valuable *because* it is not a patent on some
particular program, but rather on a method which might be used
in many programs.

Terry's argument, again, is that it would be stupid to get a patent
on a *specific program*, no matter what that program is.  Evidently
you are in complete agreement with him on this, since you so clearly
elucidate the benefits of making patent claims as general as
possible:

> Claim 666: ``In the compression and decompression system of
> claim 1, any method of providing the code signals using a
> standard input-output library.''
>
> Remember that patents often consist of tens or hundreds of claims.
>
>> 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.
>
>Your error (well, really Zippy's error) is in assuming that
>compress-without-stdio won't infringe on a patent just because the
>patent covers compress-with-stdio.

Um, NO.  There is no such error here.  Neither Terry nor I made any
such silly assumption.	We both understand perfectly that compress(1)
is covered by the LZW patent, as would be any LZW-using variation
of it.	That's because the LZW patent is *NOT* a patent on the
compress(1) program; it is instead a patent on a method *used by*
compress(1), and thus is a patent which covers compress(1), as
well as many other possible programs.  This is why it is valuable.

To sum up:

1.  A program is not the same as a method which that program
    happens to use.
2.  A patent on a method is valuable, because it can apply to
    any program using that method.
3.  A patent on an entire program is useless, because none of
    the methods used by the program are protected against use
    in other programs which differ in trivial ways from the
    patented program.

It looks to me like we are both managing to talk past each other,
despite being in complete agreement.  If you have a different
impression, at least review the posts leading up to this one
before answering.

Otherwise, this horse has been beaten enough.  RIP.

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