EDIT: The original post seems to be deleted. Here it is so that my answer makes sense (I don't believe in deleting my own posts) >Serious question, since I se

EDIT: The original post seems to be deleted. Here it is so that my answer makes sense (I don't believe in deleting my own posts) >Serious question, since I see this said a lot, but isn't that true of anything other than process patents? I'm hard-pressed to think of a patent in any other engineering discipline that at the end of the day doesn't boil down to math. Here's how I look at it: If someone come up with a better car engine, they can patent it because it's a design and application of math. It's not like they patented the Carnot Cycle and precluded ANYONE from ever building ANY internal combustion engine. It's a specific design, not a general formula. Patenting an algorithm, which is a purely mathematical construct, precludes any work done in the field. Patenting the design an ASIC that implements the algorithm would be the closest example I can think of to patenting an engine based on the Carnot cycle (and I'd be fine with a patent on your ASIC design).