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Re:MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired by TheDong on Thursday February 15, 2018 @05:24PM (#16388333)
That's a bit of a jump. You go from "mechanical systems are patentable" + "some software emulates mechanical systems (which are patentable)" to "all software, regardless of whether it is related to a real mechanical system, is patentable".

Does that not seem like a huge leap? mpeg2 sure isn't encoding a mechanical mechanism. Hardly any software these days really is. Software now is mostly focussed on dealing with ætherial information, not physical machines.

Re:MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired by shawnz on Friday February 16, 2018 @09:34AM (#16392562)
Well, the physical universe is turing complete, so it is obviously at least possible to build a mechanical mpeg2 encoder. Should it be patentable?