🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <900@nddsun1.sps.mot.com> waters@nddsun1.sps.mot.com (Mike Waters) writes:

   }  This is the type
   }of burden that would be placed upon programmers were software patents of
   }commonly used procedures to become widespread.   

   Not possible because only inventions can be patented!

Yes of course, but what is an invention?

   }If software is patentable, then why isn't mathematics?  There is no
   }real distinction.

   Have you ever tried to fly an airplane with only a set of log tables in
   place of the controls? Software produces commercially useful results. 

So does mathematics.  (This may come as a surprise to some people).

In another article, abc@adm.brl.mil (Brinton Cooper) writes:

   >If software is patentable, then why isn't mathematics?  There is no
   >real distinction.

   Isn't it true that mathematics is (was) thought to have always existed,
   much as the physical universe described by physics has "always existed"
   (or evolved)?  I believe that mathematics was forbidden from  patenting
   because it was thought that mathematics is "discovered" and not
   invented and that it was created by a Higher Being.

I won't subscribe to the Higher Being theory, but I think your point
is a fundamental one.  You can't patent discoveries!  What if Columbus
had been able to patent America?  (Of course the original inhabitants
could probably have the patent overthrown by a claim of "prior art",
but you get my drift).

The sticky problem is where do the discoveries stop and the inventions
start.  As a mathematician I prove theorems.  I believe those theorems
were just as true before I proved them, hence I may call my proof a
discovery.  In a sense you could say I invented the techniques to be
used in the proof, just like I might "invent" a whole new field of
research.  But since an inventor of a circuit, say, is constrained by
physical laws in making his invention, you could call that invention a
discovery: He has discovered a possibility allowed by the constraints.
So where exactly is the dividing line between what is a discovery and
what is an invention?  Unless someone can come up with a real good,
testable definition, maybe the discovery/invention dichotomy is not
all that fruitful after all?

- Harald Hanche-Olsen <hanche@imf.unit.no>
  Division of Mathematical Sciences
  The Norwegian Institute of Technology
  N-7034 Trondheim, NORWAY