[107505] in Cypherpunks
Re: Babbage's Revenge; Patenting any algorithm reducible to software practice
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Fred Hapgood)
Fri Jan 15 09:30:36 1999
From: hapgood@pobox.com (Fred Hapgood)
To: 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
Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 14:13:51 GMT
In-Reply-To: <v04020a21b2c3e26ccd60@[139.167.130.246]>
Reply-To: hapgood@pobox.com (Fred Hapgood)
>It's not the *market*, like fookd, that's patentable, it's the business
>practice, an algorithm, turned into software, that makes it patentable.
Exactly my point. And that's what makes the concept totally unenforceable,
right? By 'totally' enforceable I mean its enforcement depends on
other jurisdictions' accepting concepts that new, alien, bizarre on
their face, economically disadvantaging, and politically repugnant.
All in all, not high odds.
The expense of enforcing patent enfringements in a marketplace with 200+
jurisdictions is bound to alter our relation to the mechanism. That
rethink has to start somewhere and be touched off by some trigger.
Business patents might be it. Hope so.
>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.
Have you tried it? If you have, you won't twice. The business model
is to encourage their 'customer' to overbid and then pocket the difference.
In other words, the company is not on your side. It is trying
to make a fool of you, and does everything it can to mystify and obscure your
relation to the process. There is no help service to speak of, and I
speak as someone who has exchanged a half dozen emails with it. You
can't submit two bids for the same trip, and the site encourages you to make
high bids. What a punk outfit.
Fred
