17 Dec
2003
17 Dec
'03
11:17 p.m.
Eric Cordian wrote:
3. The court didn't uphold a patent on applied math; it upheld a process patent on a crypto system that, among other things, uses applied math. So does almost any engineering design.
There is a fundamental difference between a physical machine whose design required the use of mathematics, and an abstract mathematical transformation, which may exist only in an instance of some computer program performing a certain task.
I am not taking part in this debate but simply like to point to the fact that the creteria of what is patentable appear to be undergoing some change. One illustrative example is that DNA sequences can currently be patented as far as I know. M. K. Shen