🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <GUEST.91Mar8135633@geech.ai.mit.edu> guest@geech.ai.mit.edu (Guest Account) writes:

   I have to disagree with your opinion that some patents are useful.
   According to the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8:

From the remaining context it looks like you meant "some [software] patents
are useful".

Anyway, the remainder of your post is hard for me to disagree with at all.

However, I allow that some "software patents" might still be useful only
because I don't know of a reliable, justifiable means to truly distinguish
(in a legal sense) a "software patent" from some other kind of patent.

And I don't have the experience with enough software patents themselves to
attempt to make such a distinction.

If there is an easy way to make such a distinction, then I'd probably be
entirely in agreement with abolishing software patents entirely.  Perhaps it's
a simple matter of disallowing patents that are implementable as Turing
machines?  Please don't get into a discussion of this possibility with me
(do it with others), because I'm really not knowledgeable in this area at
all.  I do think people want to be able to patent the software that controls
matter-transformation processes, such as NC (Numerical Control) machinery
and its software, so it'd be important either to address such concerns or
explicitly show why they can't be addressed in a revocation of software
patentability.
--

James Craig Burley, Software Craftsperson    burley@ai.mit.edu