🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct12.173419.17078@athena.cs.uga.edu>, mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu (Michael Covington) writes:
|> In article <1992Oct12.112607.13870@doug.cae.wisc.edu> kolstad@cae.wisc.edu (Joel Kolstad) writes:
|> ...
|> >I realize that if you have _the_ Smith chart produced by ??? Electric, you
|> >can't copy it -- just like a book.  But if you regenerate the plot from the
|> >mathematical model?  This seems odd to me...  if so, pretty soon people
|> >will want to copyright things like the Mandelbrot set, etc.!
|> 
|> not the function itself.  If he had wanted to restrict the _use_ of
|> this plotted function as a means of calculating complex impedances, he
|> should have gotten a patent rather than a copyright.  And he didn't.
|> 

	While it's gone in and out of the patent law, I believe it's not allowed
	in the patent law to patent a mathematical theory. For instance, if
	Newton had a patent on f = ma, you'd have to pay a royalty every time
	an apple fell on your head, every time you fell down, etc.

	I'd presume the same principle would make the math behind the Smith Chart
	non-patentable.
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Scott Ferguson                        Exxon Research & Engineering Co.
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