In one sentence it is an algorithm: "The development of the algorithm was performed at IBM Research - Zurich and was presented on Thursday at the Society for I

In one sentence it is an algorithm: "The development of the algorithm was performed at IBM Research - Zurich and was presented on Thursday at the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics conference in Seattle. " In the next, it is "software" and subject to patenting: "The Zurich team has been working on the software for the last year-and-a-half and they were able to patent it at the end of 2009, prior to publishing the results." So confusing... I didn't think patenting of algorithms was permitted. Color me confused...