From: mcgregor@netcom.com (Scott L. McGregor)
Subject: Re: Software engineering patents
Reply-To: mcgregor@netcom.com
Organization: Atherton Technology, Inc.
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 23:20:45 GMT

In article <BtK1zM.My2@world.std.com> srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian)  
writes:

>                            SOFTWARE CATEGORIES FOR WHICH
>                              PATENTS ARE BEING AWARDED

I'm confused by this posting.  Who has created these categories?  Who is  
assigning patents to each category and on what basis?  1700 patents were  
surveyed, and possibly 921 (approx 54%) of them are accounted for in the list.  
It is not clear if that means that 46% of the patents surveyed were classified  
as in other categories, or if that 46% were part of these categories, but were  
not considered software related.  The title seems to suggest the former  
interpretation, but then it is hard to understand why "Automobile", "Chemistry"  
and "Physics" appear in this list.

It is not even clear if the numbers represent single counting or double  
counting. That is, if a patent concerned "Chemistry and Physics Simulations for  
Engineering organic compounds for Medicine & Genetics" would that appear just  
once in the listing, or 5 times?   If such double counting did occur, there  
might be only about 6% of the total set surveyed accounted for.  

Lastly without clarity about how these were determined to be software, nor how  
they are assigned to categories, we cannot tell if they were merely patents in  
which the words "Graphics" or "User Interface" occurred (but that might have  
little to do with the actual thrust of the patent), or whether they are patents  
whose coverage is for those areas.  We can't even tell if a design patent  
concerning the PHYSICAL front-panel of an instrument might show up because that  
too is described as a User Interface.  We can't tell if these are patents that  
are "purely" software, or mostly hardware--it would be surprising if there were  
really 8 automobile patents that used general purpose computers in the sense  
suggested by the LPF's proposed software patent characterization.  Few cars  
have traditional general purpose computers in them--though all new cars have  
many microprocessors in them controlling various physical and electrical  
processes.  Thus, unthinking acceptance of these metrics might lead one to be  
overly concerned about software patents.  On the other hand, too cavalier a  
rejection of the data could lead to too little concern.  Only more information  
can clear this up.

All this *data* seems to be circulating here concerning software patents, but  
it is so hard to tease any *information* out of it.  It is like hearing two  
contestants argue about the score of their game so far--but you don't know  
which game they are playing.  One person says it is 14-7 so far; it would be  
nice to know whether they were playing football, basketball, golf, ping-pong or  
bowling. Without that information you can't really tell how close the game is,  
or how near it is to a final conclusion.   

Similarly, it is hard to make a reasoned decision about software patent risks  
when you can't get real information out of the data.  Without information,  
everyone is reduced to emotional responses which don't seem to get us closer to  
agreement.
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng