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From: karn@chicago.qualcomm.com (Phil Karn)
Subject: Re: VCR+ code question: Was it cracked and legal action taken?
Message-ID: <1992Jan9.184540.4072@qualcomm.com>
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Organization: Qualcomm, Inc
References: <1992Jan8.214949.4367@news.cs.brandeis.edu> <13806@oasys.dt.navy.mil> <1992Jan09.175040.12321nagle@netcom.COM>
Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1992 18:45:40 GMT
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In article <1992Jan09.175040.12321nagle@netcom.COM> nagle@netcom.COM (John Nagle) writes:
>      Just applying for a patent doesn't guarantee that one will be issued.
>And the PTO may limit how much the patent covers, by rejecting claims.

If recent history is any guide, this isn't likely. Nowadays if you
have the money, you can get a patent on virtually anything -- trivial
or complex, nonobvious, obvious, useful or not useful, original or not
original.  The Patent Office's policy is apparently to grant virtually
every patent application (after some random period of meaningless
"review") and let the courts sort it out.

>      The PTO takes the position that you can't patent a "mathematical
>formula", but the Supreme Court ordered them to accept computer programs
>as inventions.

When did this happen? My understanding is that the Court decided that
you can't refuse to grant a patent on a complete system simply because
it happens to contain, as one component, a computer program. But this
is a far cry from ruling that "computer programs are patentable" and
"ordering the Patent Office to patent computer programs", although
unfortunately many patent lawyers and the Patent Office seem to have
taken this position. See the League for Programming Freedom papers on
software patents -- they discuss this distinction in considerably more
detail.

Phil
