The last patent on AC-3 (Dolby Digital) expires at midnight

Re:The last patent on AC-3 (Dolby Digital) expires at midnight by spacemanmatt on Monday March 20, 2017 @12:19PM (#13915382)

I'm against software patents for the same reason I'm against patents on things that are mathematics. Note, I've said "are" and not "like." Calling a mathematical formula, concept, or algorithm something else (e.g. "codec" or "my life's work" or "Fraunhoffer's intellectual property" does not make it more than math, and most certainly cannot serve to reify the abstract subject matter. Nowhere in the rules of eligibility is novelty contemplated as an exception to exclusions of abstract concepts and phenomena of nature.

Novel math is still abstract, and as such, strictly ineligible. Software is the same, in that it is purely abstract. It will take time for the courts to catch up to reality, but they have trended in that direction.

Whether I agree or not that, as you say, "...novel ways should be patentable." they are, by the letter of the enacting law, ineligible.

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Re:The last patent on AC-3 (Dolby Digital) expires at midnight by Karunamon on Monday March 20, 2017 @12:26PM (#13915444)

You're talking about the law, I'm talking about the principle that underpins the law and what the law should be as a result. These are two separate topics.

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Re:The last patent on AC-3 (Dolby Digital) expires at midnight by spacemanmatt on Monday March 20, 2017 @01:04PM (#13915770)

I am also saying I agree strongly with the law's straight-forward stipulation that abstract material is ineligible. There's no justification for letting someone patent things just because they went to a lot of trouble to find or create something obscure, if it is entirely imaginary (abstract) or part of nature.

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