🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <19233:May2121:28:2291@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
>In article <1991May20.225855.382@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> dennis@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Dennis Ferguson) writes:
>> I'd point
>> out that all patents are patents on methods.
>
>This is not correct. Most patents are patents on actual, tangible
>objects---in particular, drugs.

You are right, though I plead culture shock.  To extend your earlier
example, in this country one simply couldn't patent a process for
curing rubber.  What one does is patent a device for curing rubber
which uses the process and then hope that if others build devices
for curing rubber using the same process that you'll be able to argue
in court that their device is an obvious variation of the one you
patented.

I don't believe you could patent the RSA method here, either, divorced
from a device which actually uses it.  All one could do is patent a
device to do public key encryption using the algorithm and then hope
to argue in court that, say, a piece of software running on a general
purpose computer constituted a "device" similar enough to yours that
it represented an infringement.  I have utterly no idea how the courts
would decide in such cases, though I sort of hope they would throw it out.

Dennis Ferguson
University of Toronto