Re: copyright questions

["Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr>]

Le Tue, 14 Aug 2012 17:39:22 +0200, Vasiliy Molostov <molostoff@gmail.com>  
a écrit:

> APIs are not patentable, since does not contain any formula or process  
> description, they are writings in a tangible fixed form in nature,  
> instead you can issue patent on interface protocol, which describes a  
> process (for example - ada task body).
>
> Ada 2012 standard comes with contracts in specifications (with PRE =>  
> ... etc) and can make them patentable (more patentable than before),  
> since specification becomes a formula.

What kind of formulas are patentable? At least, I'm rather sure math  
formulas are not. I heard to say patents are mainly intended to protect  
investment made in physical processes researches (which are indeed  
typically more expensive than computer based research and modelling).  
There are also some laws intended to allow reverse engineering, when this  
is justified by needs for interoperability. I guess balancing between the  
right for interoperability and the right for patent, would be an horror.  
Patenting API and protocol (not internal protocols, which is different),  
would be like patenting the precise definition of a standard screw thread.  
Hardly believable, isn't it? With software, you have ways to protect your  
stuff, you don't have with physical things. For physical things, you have  
no choice, except patents. For software, patents are not required: you can  
decide to not publish sources (or provide these only to parties you can  
trust), encrypt data, and others options. If you want to protect an  
investment made in an xyz-alloy (which typically implies avoiding sales  
lost), you have no others choices, you must patent (I don't mean a  
metallic alloy is easy to copy, but that's less easy to protect simply,  
than to protect non-trivial original computation techniques distributed as  
machine instructions).


-- 
“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.” [1]
“Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.” [1]
[1]: Epigrams on Programming — Alan J. — P. Yale University