I conceed your point. Nicely reasoned. Thank you. _Vin At 12:12 PM -0500 11/18/98, Brown, R Ken wrote:
The real point is surely that a patent for a device invented by someone with a basic knowledge of physics is used to protect the *invention* not the *knowledge*. They are not used to prevent anyone else inventing another device using the same basic knowledge of physics.
Even if it is perfectly just for the RSA (or any other) patent "taken as a whole" to be used to protect "not merely a disembodied mathematical concept but rather a specific machine"; that *doesn''t* mean it is neccessarily just to use the patent to protect that "disembodied mathematical concept" when it is used in some other "specific machine". But software patents *are* used to try to stop people employing the same algorithms in other inventions. So, despite the ingenuous ruling of the court they *are* being used to try to control "disembodied mathematical concepts" - in other words ideas.
I have no idea if Watt had a patent on the steam governor. But I bet he didn't try to take one out on Boyle's Law.
Ken Brown
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