Slashdot Mirror

Yes, that's what I'm saying. We have clear rulings from the Supreme Court against patents on software for general-purpose digital computers. They didn't rule on patents covering software that doesn't preempt the use of algorithms on general-purpose digital computers, and called on the legislature to clarify things, but that never happened.

The dissent in Diehr criticized the majority for not issuing a clear ruling to reiterate Benson and Flook. For my part, having read Diehr, I thought the opinion was clear enough. But widespread misconceptions about Diehr prove me wrong and the dissent right; more clarity would have helped. I try to do my part with Diamond v. Diehr, abridged.

I would certainly hope for such influence. All software patents I've seen are invalid under US Supreme Court precedent, but the USPTO and lower courts seem really confused.

US Judges have already "defeated" software patents without needing to invoke the constitution. Apparently existing statute already excludes abstract ideas, mathematical algorithms and computer software.

It used to be that even inclusion of software as part of a patent application would mean it got rejected. When the Supreme Court opined, "a claim drawn to subject matter otherwise statutory does not become nonstatutory simply because it uses a mathematical formula, computer program or digital computer," a lot of people took that as license to make software patents, even though the Court did not want to "allow a competent draftsman to evade the recognized limitations on the type of subject matter eligible for patent protection."

The full Diamond v. Diehr opinion is available various places on the web, but you may find my Diamond v. Diehr, Abridged more readable.

I consider ideas to be real innovation, and they are not always easy. However, in a sense I agree with you. There is a short supply of implementations, but an abundant supply of ideas. U.S. law has not seen fit to make ideas patentable for this very reason. Since academics and others gladly publish ideas without the need for a temporary monopoly, you do not "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" by granting patents.

For this reason, abstract ideas, mathematical algorithms, and their embodiment in computer software have never been statutory material for patents, erroneous rulings by lower courts (contradicting the US Supreme Court) notwithstanding. Interestingly, this means that if the EU ratifies software patents, they will be the first political entity where such patents are truly valid.

(Of course, don't take this as legal advice. To defeat software patents you would have to get the US Supreme Court to take another case, which they haven't done since 1981.)

No, the majority found novelty in the continuous measuring of temperature without needing to open/close the door, and in the system as a whole. Sorry the opinion is so hard to read, but try my abridged version.

Demo from my linode

If you validate and/or escape your inputs, there's no security issue with having SQL right there in your web front end. The problem is that most languages people use for web front ends do not make it convenient to do this. See my map demo for a one-page SQL app with a view source link. The same idea that makes it secure can make a large app secure.

The Java language is more cumbersome than necessary for the type of programming usually involved in web apps. Luckily, you don't have to use the Java language to use the JRE and Java objects, thanks to GNU Kawa.

My maze generator on brlewis.com would have been a Project with Java/JSP, but was a quick hack with Kawa/BRL.