[music-dsp] request: juridical point of view on patents

[Didier Dambrin]

But unfortunately (well, by reading so many dumb existing patents), rules #1
& #2 can easily be bypassed :(

Well, since it's about FM, isn't multiplying a waveform by another kinda
'obvious'? Or maybe it's only obvious & simple for today's programmers?


I didn't know about rule #3, though. It's weird - I don't see why a patent
should be restricted to useful things.. what could be the logic?



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Christopher Weare" <chriswea at microsoft.com>
To: "a list for musical digital signal processing"
<music-dsp at ceait.calarts.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2004 5:01 PM
Subject: RE: [music-dsp] request: juridical point of view on patents


There are three big rules for a patent:

It must be novel.

It must not be obvious to "the practitioner skilled in the art" within the
given domain.

It must do something 'useful'

The first point will depend on prior art: patents, publications, etc.
Remember that novel applies to the entire invention.  Components of the
invention might be well known, but the invention combines them in a new way.

The second point is typically addressed by referring to the instructional
literature.  If it is in a textbook or otherwise commonly known then it can
not be patented.  If, however, we assume for the moment that addition had
not yet been discovered then it is obviously not obvious. ;-)

In addition (oh, I'm on a roll...look out!), one can take a commonly known
technique (see above), or set of techniques and apply them in a novel way.
This was done by LakeDSP (or so their lawyers argue) for their 0 latency
convolving patent.

The third issue is up to the author of the patent.  He must convince the
patent examiner that the invention is somehow useful.  This is not very
difficult.  I've yet to see any patent get bounced because the examiner felt
'Gee, this device is not useful.'

-chris

-----Original Message-----
From: music-dsp-bounces at ceait.calarts.edu
[mailto:music-dsp-bounces at ceait.calarts.edu] On Behalf Of Didier Dambrin
Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2004 7:50 AM
To: a list for musical digital signal processing
Subject: Re: [music-dsp] request: juridical point of view on patents

mmh it's a bit silly to see addition as an 'invention'. It's a logical &
natural fact, there's no invention in this.

What can be seen as an invention is the decimal scale. If there's another
intelligent lifeform in the universe, they do know addition and
multiplication, while they're likely to be using another scale.

I think that patents should just not apply to things that are too simple.
Now the problem is to define 'too simple'..
For some people, a wooden stick with which you clean your teeth is a
'wonderful & ingenious invention'. Either those people are so moronic that
they wouldn't in their whole life have thought of a toothpick, or maybe
they're just overenthusiastic.







----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Christopher Weare" <chriswea at microsoft.com>
To: "a list for musical digital signal processing"
<music-dsp at ceait.calarts.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2004 4:21 PM
Subject: RE: [music-dsp] request: juridical point of view on patents


Assuming that addition were not known today, If you were to come up with
addition you could not patent it.  However, you could patent a 'device' that
implemented the addition algorithm that would all but lock up all
applications of addition on computers.

If you then patent a hand written scribing implement then you could also tie
up the manual use of addition as well.  Imagine all the little school
children coughing up their coin to you so they can complete their lessons.

-chris

-----Original Message-----
From: music-dsp-bounces at ceait.calarts.edu
[mailto:music-dsp-bounces at ceait.calarts.edu] On Behalf Of Adamcool
Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2004 12:12 AM
To: a list for musical digital signal processing; a list for musical digital
signal processing
Subject: RE: [music-dsp] request: juridical point of view on patents

ccos wrote:
>>presumably at some stage in history little
>>would have been known about addition and some very smart people would
>>have had to discover its properties, but i think most people on this
>>list would agree that patenting addition would be quite a silly
proposition.

It would be silly to get a patent on addition nowadays, but imagine if the
inventor of addition (probably dead by now) would not have told anyone about
his invention because he would not be able to earn money as long as he could
not get any patent on it!!

Keeping people from using addition for twenty years would be quite a good
trade for all of us others which can now use it...this is probably the idea
of the whole patent system... unfortunately there are several companies who
more or less "steal" inventions and patent them on their own (I cannot
however not say whether this was the case with Yamaha) but thats life! You
just have to learn to use it yourself: get a bunch of lawyers and start
patenting others inventions :)

adam

-----Original Message-----
From: music-dsp-bounces at ceait.calarts.edu
[mailto:music-dsp-bounces at ceait.calarts.edu]On Behalf Of ccos
Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2004 1:24 AM
To: a list for musical digital signal processing
Subject: Re: [music-dsp] request: juridical point of view on patents



>>> FM is patented by Yamaha.
>>> So, if I were to make some FM synth, I prolly have to pay some $ to
>>> them
>>> for using their technology... right?
>
> Nothing wrong with that -

patenting FM is kind of like patenting addition, it's ridiculous and i
for one
wouldn't pay one red cent for it. presumably at some stage in history
little
would have been known about addition and some very smart people would
have had to discover its properties, but i think most people on this
list would
agree that patenting addition would be quite a silly proposition. i
think that the
key word here is discovery as much as it is invention. a set of
equations or
an arrangement of unit generators is as much a discovery in the primal
soup
of possible equations as it is a so called invention, and that soup
don't belong
to yamaha no matter how much time and money they put into then studying
some
subset of those equations for some particular application. of course
the law might
disagree with me, but then the law aint always right. that said, we owe
an immense
*intellectual* debt to great minds like chowning's as well as to all of
those who worked
on FM for radio before him. where would we be if chowning had not been
able
to proceed with his work because of patents on the trigonometric
functions.

2¢,
_c

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