[Kooler] Patents.

[Chad K. Lewis]

"John H. Robinson, IV" wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Oct 12, 1999 at 08:36:04AM -0700, John Oliver wrote:
> > "John H. Robinson, IV" wrote:
> >
> > > But the whole RSA thing is still a mathematical function, which is a
> > > law of nature, which is, by PTO standards, unpatentable. Which means
> > > that the RSA patent (and, by extension, -ALL OTHER SOFTWARE PATENTS-)
> > > is illegal.
> > >
> > > Now if we could just convice Congress of that, millions of coders can
> > > breath a sigh of releif, and get back to work.
> >
> > Forget that!  If RSA can patent a mathematical function/law of nature,
> > then I hereby declare my intention to patent the law of gravity.  Don't
> > worry... my licensing fees will be quite reasonable.  After all, since
> > every person and institution on Earth will have to license their use of
> > my patented gravity, just a few cents from each will make me a stinkin'
> > gazillionaire! :-)
> 
> way off topic:
> 
> it used to be back in the dark ages of programming, that all these
> patents were thrown out outright.
> 
> then one day (i forget the company) found a way to use a computer program
> to assist in making rubber. the PTO said that the use of the program
> did not make the process unpatentable, gave the patent, and opened
> the floodgate for software patents:
> 
> the software must interact with hardware in some way.
> XOR's are not patentable.
> use XOR to draw a cursor on a screen is patentable (as shown in patent
> # 4,070,710)
> 
> so your gravity patent must interact with something, say, apples:
> 
>         A means to cause two objects, with mass, to have a distinct,
>         measurable, and quantifiable attraction to move towards each
>         other with no outside forces, that is proportional to their
>         masses and inversly proportional to the square of the distances
>         from their center of mass.
> 
> -john

Bzzt. I managed to find some prior art involving apples and gravity from
about 300 and some years ago. Some guy named Isaac.

Amazingly enough, the PTO would even understand this. Their biggest
problem is that none of them seem to know much about computers. The
pressure to "get their jobs done" doesn't help either.

ckl
-- 
Chad Lewis                  Free the Source
                             and Your Mind
                              Will Follow