Subj : Re: Software Patents
To   : comp.programming
From : Gerry Quinn
Date : Thu Jul 14 2005 11:24 am

In article <daufso$o7j$1@news1nwk.SFbay.Sun.COM>, 
samiamsansspam@Sun.COM says...

> Thus, software patents have created a "gold rush" mentality, where
> people try to patent stacking up blocks to get money. The best
> example is the patent for quicksort with a linked list. This is
> taking two previous "blocks" that both were nontrivial, and sticking
> them together, which was trivial. You can say that the patent should
> have been rejected because it was obvious, but the other way to
> solve that problem is to say that stacking up computer instructions,
> no matter how interesting, is a trivial change of the real underlying
> technology, which was the invention of the stored program computer.

That's as silly as claiming that all patents dealing with physicakl 
processes are a trivial change of the underlying technology of causing 
quantities of atoms to stick together.

- Gerry Quinn

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