[107453] in Cypherpunks
Re: Babbage's Revenge; Patenting any algorithm reducible to
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Hettinga)
Thu Jan 14 13:13:31 1999
In-Reply-To: <369f1800.8877117@world.std.com>
Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 12:40:13 -0500
To: hapgood@pobox.com
From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Cc: dcsb@ai.mit.edu, Digital Bearer Settlement List <dbs@philodox.com>,
e$@vmeng.com, cryptography@c2.net, cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Reply-To: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
At 11:39 AM -0500 on 1/14/99, Fred Hapgood wrote:
> Imagine you are a regulator/politician/citizen of some other
> country, like for instance France. Imagine a French citizen
> starts a business selling French bread online. That business
> is then sued in a French court by an American company, not because
> the French company is infringing on a bread patent, or a trade
> name copyright, but because the American company has a patent
> on selling foods online. It has nothing to do with bread.
> It could care less about bread.
It actually can't have to do with food, even, the way I understand it.
The State Street Bank case seems to be more mechanistic than that.
It was a patent on a hub-and-spoke bank account pooling *method* written
into software.
It is the *method* (software) run through an *apparatus* (hardware) that
makes something patentable.
It's not the *market*, like fookd, that's patentable, it's the business
practice, an algorithm, turned into software, that makes it patentable.
The priceline.com patent (which, to me, still looks like a copy of the New
York Stock Exchange specialist's book, but I could be wrong, particularly
as it uses the very airline-specific "load-factor", or somesuch, in its
language) is another example. It represents an algorithm for doing
business, which, the closer you get to ubiquitous processing and network
bandwidth, means *all* business *operations*. Not markets, but the
operating methodology.
Cheers,
Robert Hettinga
-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
