From: brnstnd@nyu.edu (D. J. Bernstein)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk,misc.int-property,alt.suit.att-bsdi,comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: Patents:  What they are.  What they aren't.  Other factors.
Date: 11 Oct 92 04:20:00 GMT
Organization: IR

In article <1992Oct9.002901.14966@netcom.com> mcgregor@netcom.com (Scott Mcgregor) writes:
> I don't believe that you can be held to infringe LZW if you
> use it to encrypt data

Claim 1 of the Unisys LZW patent covers any system which engages in a
certain process. That process is LZW. If you somehow use LZW for a
different purpose, you will still infringe upon that patent.

Scott, you don't seem to realize that the courts have prohibited all
patents upon mathematical algorithms, *even when* the patents are
restricted to a particular field of technology. You talk about such
restrictions as if they make all the difference in the world. They
don't.

> Thanks for the opportunity, but I'll have to pass on such an
> ill-defined objective. I've got a business to run.

Ah. You have enough time in a week to write thousands of lines of
pro-software-patent rhetoric in a public forum, and you don't have
enough time to come up with a single example of a beneficial software
patent to contrast to dozens of examples of hurtful software patents.

> Because I think that there is a danger in people proposing policy when
> there is insufficient or conflicting evidence to support their claims.

Fine. If you think that an anti-software-patent policy is dangerous, why
don't you point out some of that ``conflicting evidence''?

> I agree that the status quo before Diamond vs. Diehr worked. But I see
> what the status quo was before Diamond vs. Diehr differently than you.
> I see it as allowing algorithms, but requiring them to be tied to
> physical implementations.

Explain patent number 3380029, then.

  [ calls the LPF position ``doomsaying'' ]
> Will the dangers that have been so
> long coming  really come so swiftly in the next decade?

Okay, Scott, where is Paperback Software?

  [ trying to explain the epidemic of software patents since 1980 ]
> There may just be more people out there now who would want to patent
> applications of their software than before.

The point, Scott, was that the status quo has changed recently: the LPF
wants to change _back_. The fact that people want things is a side
issue.

> However, I do think that
> substantial incentives are necessary if most of these are ever to
> become available to the average everyday consumer or company.

Please read prep.ai.mit.edu:pub/lpf/laf-fallacies.texi.Z. Incentives are
not the purpose of patent law.

> LZW may be a mathematical algorithm.  But I don't agree that LZW is
> patented.

You are, unfortunately, wrong. Two companies own patents on LZW.

> As Dan has a personal stake in striking down a patent
> involving a compression algorithm patent, perhaps we will get to see
> if the courts agree with him.

Please retract that offensive statement. I have no financial interest in
Storer's patent. I am angry that Storer hid AP coding from the community
by failing to publish it properly, and I see the software industry as a
whole being damaged by insanely broad monopolies, so I would be happy to
testify as an expert witness in any compression patent court case; but I
do not have a ``personal stake'' in seeing Storer's obsolete compression
patent struck down.

---Dan