…and yet there are software patents.
In a long draft article entitled “You Canâ??t Patent Software: Patenting Software Is Wrong” – Peter Junger states that which most lawyers fail to see. Maybe because they are blinded by economics?
Computer programs are texts, not machines as some lawyers have confused themselves into believing, and thus they may be copyrighted and protected by the First Amendment, but they are not patentable as machines. Computer programs are indeed processes, but they are not patentable processes because what they process is information and what they produce is information, not some modification of material goods or articles of commerce. The simple fact is—though the reasons for it may be hard for most lawyers to grasp—that, as the title of this article puts it: “You can’t patent software: patenting software is wrong.”
A nice, old school, scholarly legal paper which hammers home it’s point. It’s a good way to start the week with a work like this.