RE: Rivest Patent

[Vin McLellan <vin@shore.net>]

I conceed your point.  Nicely reasoned. Thank you.

	_Vin


At 12:12 PM -0500 11/18/98, Brown, R Ken wrote:

>The real point is surely  that a patent for a device invented by someone
>with  a basic knowledge of physics is used to protect the *invention*
>not the *knowledge*. They are not used to prevent anyone else inventing
>another device using the same basic knowledge of physics.
>
>Even if it is perfectly just for the RSA (or any other) patent "taken as
>a whole" to be used to protect  "not merely a disembodied mathematical
>concept but rather a specific machine";  that *doesn''t* mean it is
>neccessarily just to use the patent to protect that "disembodied
>mathematical concept" when it is used in some other "specific machine".
>But software patents *are* used to try to stop people employing the same
>algorithms in other inventions. So, despite  the ingenuous  ruling of
>the court they *are* being used to try to control "disembodied
>mathematical concepts" - in other words ideas.
>
>I have no idea if Watt had a patent on the steam governor. But I bet he
>didn't try to take one out on Boyle's Law.
>
>
>Ken Brown


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