I’m patenting a method for adding two and two using a computer, now where’s my royalty cheques?

On Groklaw, there’s a great article up about Donald Knuth, one of the most celebrated open-source software programmers ever, submitting a letter to the EU’s patent office asking them to reconsider the patentability of software algorithms. They have the letter in full over there. One of the money quotes:

I am told that the courts are trying to make a distinction between mathematical algorithms and nonmathematical algorithms. To a computer scientist, this makes no sense, because every algorithm is as mathematical as anything could be.

And that’s not even mentioning patent writers’ annoying habit of adding “with a computer” to the end of methods and processes that are probably already patented.

Another thing that’s bothered me about patents is that they normally describe in enough detail how to build a machine such that, just on reading the patent, if you were a tradesman, you could build that same machine yourself. With software patents everything is described in such horrible vagueness that they amount to telling you what effect the code has, but not how to achieve it, because by necessity if they did that, they’d have to give you the code. That right there should tell you that software patents are:

unbranded-bullshit-stamp

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I’m patenting a method for adding two and two using a computer, now where’s my royalty cheques?
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