Re: GPLv3 comedy unfolding -- "Microsoft Patents FUD Report: Who is Actually Slinging it?"

[Lee Hollaar]

In article <4657049A.3272CE81@web.de> terekhov@web.de writes:
>
>Lee Hollaar wrote:
>> 
>> In article <C6ednSpqgZMqcsvbnZ2dnUVZ_uSgnZ2d@insightbb.com> rjack 
>> <rjack@ixwebhosting.com> writes:
>> >    What is utterly laughable is the fact that a purported copyright
>> >license like the GPL3 *cannot*  effect matters concerning patents.  If
>> >source code implements a patentable idea then the source code in
>> >quenstion cannot be copyrighted:
>> 
>> That statement is completely wrong.
>
>Not if there are only a limited number of ways of expressing idea (no 
>matter patentable or not). No?

If there is a single way (or maybe a very, very limited way) of
expressing an idea, it is said that the idea and the expression
have "merged" and therefore the expression is not protectable by
copyright.

That has nothing to do with whether there is a patent that covers
a method that can be implemented in software.  There is, in general,
a variety of ways to implement ("express") the method, and therefore
each implementation can have its own copyright.