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Judge Says Mathematical Algorithms Can’t Be Patented
- auggierose 14y agoSo, now we just have to define what exactly a mathematical algorithm is. Good luck with that.
- muglug 14y agoNow we just have to rewrite all "patented" algorithms in lambda-calculus. That should be easy...
- chimeracoder 14y agoIt's not that bad. "All" we have to do is implement everything in Lisp, since Lisp can be reduced trivially to the lambda calculus. Once again, Lisp saves the day! ;) EDIT: I'm totally looking forward to experienced Lisp and Haskell programmers like me being in high demand for their legendary skills... at invalidating patents!
- PENLAND365 14y agoThis brought lulz. Thanks.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- dinkumthinkum 14y agoWell if you wrote a program in any Turing complete programming language, you would be done; how "trivial" it is doesn't matter. :)
- greyfade 14y agoIndeed. By the Church-Turing Thesis, any program written for any Turing Machine (including any Turing-complete language) can be translated into the lambda calculus through a rote transformation.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- cbsmith 14y agoI'm pretty sure we're getting a grossly over simplified description of both the patent and the ruling.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- betterunix 14y agoAlan Turing did that already; see his solution to the Entscheidungsproblem.
- riazrizvi 14y agoHave I travelled back to 1972? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottschalk_v._Benson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottschalk_v._Benson
- lgray 14y agoOr 1897, when pi was almost legally changed to 3.2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill
- rsbrown 14y agoWell, this is how our system works. There is nothing stopping me from filing suit against you for posting this comment because it hurt my feelings. Then the judge throws it out because there's no basis in the law for my claim.
- fatman 14y agoMotion to dismiss for failure to state a claim? Including reading the complaint, researching and drafting an answer, and associated communications, figure 30 hours of attorney time. Wilmer Hale? Figure $400/hr. $12K to respond to a claim so frivolous that it was dismissed instantly in the friggin' Eastern District of Texas. Hope RedHat can get some fees back from these fools.
- greyfade 14y agoWe never left 1971.
- joe_the_user 14y agoIn a society chalk full of rent-takers, you would expect that when one of these rent-takers "imagines a promising new field", their first impulse is to see if they can move their figurative fences little further out to extract a "reward" for their "discovery".
- jostmey 14y agoWait, so are Software patents acceptable but patents on mathematical algorithms not okay? Where is the rational in this? Granted, the patent in question is absurd to a new extreme (trying to patent floating point numbers).
- claudius 14y agoI don’t quite get it either – though I am generally not opposed to software patents on complex software, nor for ‘maths patents’ on complex algorithms. It is just the trivial ones that get annoying over time… On the other hand, most ‘engineering patents’ were probably also quite trivial during the first few years of the modern patent system – but you don’t necessarily have to repeat mistakes :)
- greyfade 14y agoMathematics are reasoned to be "a law of nature," and "abstract ideas," and so they are explicitly excluded as unpatentable subject matter under 35 USC 101. Algorithms are established to be mathematics under Case Law, particularly Chakrabarty, 447 U.S. at 309, 206 USPQ at 197; and Flook, 437 U.S. at 585, 198 USPQ at 195. Diehr, 450 U.S. at 188-178; establishes that if the patent is for a particular application of an abstract idea, but not for the abstract idea itself, it may be patentable.
- jlgreco 14y ago> Diehr, 450 U.S. at 188-178; establishes that if the patent is for a particular application of an abstract idea, but not for the abstract idea itself, it may be patentable. So what does that mean, "a^2 + b^2 = c^2" cannot be patented, but "using 'a^2 + b^2 = c^2' to find the length^2 of the hypotenuse of a right triangle" in theory could be (were it "invented" today of course)?
- codegeek 14y agoSeems like uniloc is willing to file lawsuits without any considerations. see below for an interesting Q&A on uniloc's site: Q. How many additional lawsuits does Uniloc plan to file? A. Uniloc plans to defend our patents aggressively whenever they are infringed. This protects our business and our shareholder value. In our view, it’s the right thing to do.
- smrtinsert 14y ago'mathematical algorithms' is a little broad.
- voidlogic 14y agoGood thing all source code is just very convenient mathematical notation describing an algorithm... This to me is the most fundamental reason software patents are insane.
- baddox 14y agoNot to mention that any piece of digital media (an MP3, JPEG, etc.) is just a big integer.
- nealabq 14y agoYour DNA is also a big integer. You're a just a number.
- voidlogic 14y agoDNA is data and code, code is math. Your cells are computers, robots-. Your brain is a Neural network, so it is also a (different kind of) computer (built out of your cells, smaller computers/robots). All this is well very cool and well known. :)
- baddox 14y agoAnd I don't think people should have intellectual property rights over my DNA or any DNA pattern.
- upthedale 14y agoHow about over one's own DNA? An honest question... no snark intended.
- api 14y agoDoes this invalidate certain crypto patents, like the NTRU patents or the RSA patent (if it were still in effect)?
- tlarkworthy 14y agoyes until you append "... as a method for encrypting communications" (an application of said mathmatics)
- pagekicker 14y agoAre algorithms invented, or discovered? Did they, like geometry, exist in a platonic state before human thought? See Neal Stephenson's great ANATHEM.
- jwb119 14y agoSome very basic background from a famous patent case (Diamond v. Chakrabarty): "Anything under the sun that is made by man [is patentable] . . . . [T]he laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas have been held not patentable . . . a new mineral discovered in the earth or a new plant found in the wild is not patentable subject matter. Likewise, Einstein could not patent his celebrated law that E=mc2; nor could Newton have patented the law of gravity. Such discoveries are manifestations of nature, free to all men and reserved exclusively to none."
- prudhvis 14y agoIf only the loosing party have to pay for all the legal fees.
- bdg 14y agoCan we not express nearly everything in existence as a formal system?
- lisper 14y agoDoes anyone know which patent is being asserted here? I thought Uniloc only had one patent, and it was related to try-and-buy DRM. But the description in the article says "processing of floating point numbers by the Linux operating system was a patent violation" which doesn't seem to fit. Is there another Uniloc patent?
- dangrossman 14y agoThis is the patent at issue: > Method and apparatus for handling overflow and underflow in processing floating-point numbers http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5,892,697.PN.&OS=PN/5,892,697&RS=PN/5,892,697 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...
- lisper 14y agoThanks. But this is still perplexing: Surely, Linux just uses IEEE754 floating point, which predates this patent by 15 years?
- joksnet 14y agoUnder "Related Art" says: > In an effort to unify methods employed in computer systems for performing binary floating-point arithmetic, the IEEE in the early 1980's standardized computer floating-point numbers. > [...] > In reshaping the IEEE format, the present invention retains most of its benefits while offering the microprocessor designer and the real-time programmer a much cleaner and more efficient implementation. For what I understand, is an extension of the IEEE standard.
- polarix 14y agoOh no, now there's really no incentive to find new ones. We're doomed.
- ttrreeww 14y agoI guess Mathematicians will never get rich then :(
- beagle3 14y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Harris_Simons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Harris_Simons
- ttrreeww 14y agoThat's a Wall Street guy. What is your point? Everyone go to Wall Street and contribute to society in a positive way? :)
- beagle3 14y agoNow, actually follow the wikipedia link and read it, to see Simons is a professor of maths with important contributions to the math behind string theory.
- alexvr 14y agoI personally think copyright law provides enough protection for software. I think patents would actually harm innovation in the software world. Algorithms are inherently protected, anyway - they're not like clever mechanical solutions that can be reverse-engineered by anyone with eyes and a brain; they're usually close-sourced when the author wants them to be. Patents may be necessary to protect products with transparent functionality, but software usually doesn't fit that bill unless it's deliberately open-sourced. Even if you developed a strong AI algorithm that will change the world, there should be competition. It's not like Microsoft will hire a few engineers to rapidly develop something that transcends yours; it would be a reverse engineering challenge to any competition. What if algorithms behind network protocols were patented? Computers would still be novelties and corporate tools, I think.
- rayiner 14y agoSo patents solve the incentive problem, just like copyright. Copyright solves the incentive problem when "writing masses of software" is the hard part. Patents solve the incentive problem when "figuring out what software to write" is the hard part. Take things like garbage collectors. Even the most complex are only 15,000-20,000 lines of code. Writing those lines of code was the easy part--it was figuring out what that code should do, and doing all the testing to figure out what worked and what didn't that was the hard part.
- edmccard 14y ago>Copyright solves the incentive problem when "writing masses of software" is the hard part. That seems backward to me--when you've already figured out what to make, and the hard part is producing mass quantities of it--isn't that what patents are designed to protect? >Writing those lines of code was the easy part--it was figuring out what that code should do, and doing all the testing to figure out what worked and what didn't that was the hard part. Similarly, typing the words of a novel is easy; figuring out what to write is hard, which is a good reason for copyright protections, but I'm not sure if it has any bearing on the issue of patents.
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- skizm 14y agoMath can't be patented and yet you can get a patent for code snippets? This sounds absurd since all code boils down to mathematical manipulation of binary numbers. I guess if you abstract something enough you can get away with patenting it? Can we patent methods of preparing food now? How about ways to put something together (think ikea)? Why hasn't anyone patented something like the smartphone yet people can patent something as arbitrary as memory management techniques? I would say I hate our patent system but I'm just too damn confused by it to form an opinion or explain why I hate it.
- Draco6slayer 14y agoYou can't patent atoms, but you can patent compounds made of those atoms, like a new plastic. Or, if those compounds are already open, you can patent products that combine those compounds into a new shape, like a new blender. You can't patent the human voice or melodies, but you can patent a song. You can't declare that because someone's. product uses raw materials that are patent-free, that their final product isn't really an invention. Every thing is built on some other platform, so that would remove patents entirely.
- Ilmesnkie_Jones 14y agoA song isn't an invention so you would have to copyright it not patent it.
- Draco6slayer 14y agoYes, quite. Sorry. Point being though, you can own an intellectual property even if you can't own the parts and tools that go into it.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- skizm 14y agoWhy haven't people patented methods for cooking food and sued other restaurants for suspected patent infringement? Patenting solutions to common problems (programming or otherwise) seems crazy to me.
- acchow 14y agoDoes this mean I can use Fountain Codes now?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- darkhorn 14y agoPage Rank?
- rogueSkib 14y agoYou may not be able to patent math, but certain numbers are still illegal! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- betterunix 14y agoSo no more software patents? Or at least no more cryptography patents?
- drakaal 14y agoThis would overturn every video/audio/data compression patent. Every Encryption Patent. It would over turn every Google Search Ranking Patent. It would limit patents to physical things. Under that system even many physical devices would not be patent-able. The math that goes in to Battery charging optimization. Silicon Chips would not be able to patent XOR, NOR, OR, Gate logic. This judge doesn't have the authority to make such changes to patent law.
- marssaxman 14y agoAlas. What a relief that would be.
- inopinatus 14y agoAll algorithms are theorems. All theorems can be represented by unique numbers (Gödel numbers). In the abstract sense they exist at all, all numbers exist prior to their use. Therefore all algorithms are discoveries, not inventions. Ok, this argument sounds clever at first but is actually trite, being excessively reductionist and ignoring that some intellectual creativity occurs in most discovery. Most obviously it motivates a better proper definition of the term "invention". Patentable inventions should always be applications of technology, not the technology itself. The whole purpose of patents is to encourage more innovation that benefits economies as a whole, by granting a temporary monopoly to entities to benefit from the process and expense of invention. Standing to sue should be on that basis; transference of rights to another entity should not whitewash that socio-economic responsibility. Everyone with distate for the NPEs understands this.
- ateeqs 14y agoI'm waiting for Uniloc's silly patent 5,490,216 to expire in a couple of years. How can they not even have a reference product sold for this?
- mckoss 14y agoThe true problem is obviousness. Any machine is reducible to an algorithm is reducible to an integer. They are all the same. It's ridiculous to say that algorithms are "discovered" and not "made by man". There needs to be a better procedure for throwing out all the stupid obvious or trivial patents - but allow ones that have required the blood, sweat and tears of their inventor to create.
- nammaki1 14y agoi play world of warcraft iwant an hack for reset server for reset bosses in the server in 2.4.3
- nammaki1 14y agoi play world of warcraft iwant an hack for reset server for reset bosses in the server in 2.4.3