Re: Proprietary Software term

[Aaron Hill]

On 2018-08-21 11:02, Wol's lists wrote:
> A patent is
> protected by copyright because it is not a thing. It's the thing it
> describes that is protected by patent.

Obligatory "I am not a lawyer", but I took a class on intellectual 
property at university.

Patents and copyrights are different beasts, so one should be careful 
not to conflate them.

Patents are entirely concerned with inventions, that is novel, useful, 
and non-obvious solutions to specific problems that result either in an 
actual product or a practical process.

Copyrights, on the other hand, offer protection for the tangible 
expression of an idea in an original medium as well as 
non-transformative derivations into other media.

What is important here is patents can and do protect both things 
(products) and non-things (processes).  However, copyrights only protect 
things (tangible expressions), not non-things (ideas).


-- Aaron Hill