2 ms·
Not sure if you intended this, but that is exactly the basis for the old legal workaround. To be patentable, an invention must be "fixed in a tangible medium o
by bo1024 9y ago
Not sure if you intended this, but that is exactly the basis for the old legal workaround.
To be patentable, an invention must be "fixed in a tangible medium of expression" (or something like that). So the first software patents tried saying "we are patenting the following algorithm ... running on a hardware computer!" Amazingly they got away with it and have been getting away with it ever since.
Hm, I wonder if you could argue that running the algorithm on a virtual machine doesn't violate the patent....
- wmf 9y agoI wonder if you could argue that running the algorithm on a virtual machine doesn't violate the patent... I think Transmeta tried that by arguing that an x86 JIT doesn't infringe on patents for x86 processors.
- ubernostrum 9y agoYour quoted definition is for copyright, not patent. Which is why you can write a Romeo-and-Juliet story and copyright that specific story, but not the entire idea of a "doomed star-crossed lovers" story. To be patentable in the US, an invention must be a "process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof". It must be at least partly new. It must be useful. And it must be non-obvious. Abstract ideas are generally not patentable in the US, and the Supreme Court has declared that "this abstract idea, but implemented on a computer" is also generally not patentable.