Re: Software Patents

[rjack]

Lee Hollaar wrote:

> As I noted in "The Form of a Software Claim Makes a Big Difference," 
> http://digital-law-online.info/papers/lah/PTCJclaims.pdf (BNA PTCJ. 
> Vol. 73, No. 1795, 11/17/2006), if we are considering a
> Beauregard-type claim the software should be a component -- perhaps
> the most important one.

I find one section of the paper that raises interesting issues:

"Claiming Software-Based Inventions.
When applying for a patent, it is common to claim software-based
inventions in a variety of ways: method or process, system or apparatus,
article of manufacture storing a program that implements the method, or
even signals used to transmit that program. . .

The ’156 patent, ‘‘Text Matching Algorithm,’ ’ not only includes program
code for implementing the claimed technique, but also shows how it can
be implemented using special hardware circuitry. However, the patent
does note ‘‘Although it is less likely that the algorithm of the present
invention will be implemented by means of special purpose circuitry,
such circuitry is illustrated in fig. 2 to indicate the general nature
of the algorithm involved.’’

http://digital-law-online.info/papers/lah/PTCJclaims.pdf

Although difficult to believe, during Kenneth Thompson's reign there
were not millions of microprocessors with ALU's available. Electrical
engineers through necessity became very ingenious at implementing
mathematical functions with analog transistor circuitry (op-amp adders,
subtractors, integrators, differentiators etc.).

Many "software-based inventions" are used in industrial control
processes today. With today's fantastic analog IC circuit density
available, an enormous number of very precise mathmatical functions can
be emulated without even mentioning a digital circuit. Virtually all
process control digital computers use A/D and D/A for I/O.

How about some nice "analog based inventions" that never even mention
"digital" or "software" that emulate exactly the processes of many
"software based inventions"?

rjack