🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991May22.013943.26354@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> dennis@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Dennis Ferguson) writes:
>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.

Until about a decade ago, the situation regarding software patents was
similar here, although it sounds as if the Canadian law makes it more
obvious.

What happened was that someone tried to patent a device for something, and
one of the components of this device was a computer.  The patent included
the computer and its programming as one of the claims.  I think the Patent
Office initially rejected the patent on the basis that software isn't
patentable, but he appealed and eventually received his patent.  This
precedent then paved the way for the rest of the software patents.

One problem with rejecting the concept of software patents totally is that
the line between software and hardware is amazingly fine.  Silicon
compilers can convert software into the specification of a circuit that
implements the same process.  If I fabricate such a chip, I could probably
get it patented, since it is a device, but this chip would be operationally
equivalent to a CPU+ROM, as well as a CPU+RAM+DISK.  Why should one be
patentable and the other not?
-- 
Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar