Re: [Fsfe-uk] Software patent MEP response

[Alex Hudson]

On Tue, May 20, 2003 at 11:34:09AM -0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> > I remember asking someone at the UKPTO about this, and the example of a
> > 'technical effect' they came up with was a piece of software which, when
> > run, evened out/lowered the temperature on the surface of the main CPU.
> 
> So the equivalent of calling the idle call lots would be patentable if
> there wasn't prior art?!

Not quite. IIRC, he talked about different areas of the chip. So, if you
defined the chip as a 'plurality of computing units' and then defined
an algorithm that timed the idle call to different parts of the chip 
based on how hot (many transistors) each computing unit had, then you
could patent it. However, such an invention is clearly non-obvious -
I certainly have no idea how one might use idle calls to cool the 
surface area of the chip at different rates ;)

The useful thing about this particular definition of 'technical effect'
means that the software has to manifest itself physically somehow. So,
any software that doesn't interact with the physical world isn't covered.
So, just don't run it on hardware :oD

> Stop the world, I want to get off :-/

Ain't that the truth.

Cheers,

Alex.