m$ as Big Brother

[Joseph Sinclair]

Jeff Garland wrote:
> Joshua Zeidner wrote:
> 
>>   Software patents were explicitly prohibited until relatively
>> recently.  Shows you how quickly lobbying efforts can erode the
>> concepts on which justice relies.
> 
> Hmm, guess I'll have to read more b/c I didn't think that was true.  I thought 
> it was algorithms and certain processes that weren't patentable.  But anyway...
> 

Actually, Software patents are enabled under a 1975 ruling that permitted the patenting
of a "Business Method" (something that was previously barred, and should still be barred,
for much the same reasons software patents should be barred).  Software Engineers,
"Practitioners of the Art" in patent language, know that a software program is actually
the concrete actualization of one or more mathematical algorithms, but the US Supreme Court
was convinced that software is actually the implementation of a business plan.  The result is
that we have patents on two things that are of extremely limited value if kept completely
secret (per trade-secret), and are generally of immense value when naturally shared with
society (as Jeff explains quite well later in his post).  Given the purpose of US patent
and copyright law to encourage the migration of ideas from the closed realm of trade-secret
to the open realm of public-domain, granting patent protection to ideas which have a
natural in-built propensity for publication is innately contradictory to the clear purpose
of the law, and should rightly be struck.  Of course, the hard part is getting a case
to the Supreme Court where this could be done and, more importantly, getting the justices
to agree.