Well, this forum is not the right place to "sell" my invention, but the difference is that you might presumably be willing to share your name and key with a wide circle of friends, and if you had had the malicious foresight to buy it under an assumed name, then you could freely share it on a bulletin board. A credit card number has two special attributes: the vendor can (and does anyway) verify it (unlike your name) and you are not generally willing to share it. That is the essence of my invention. I do not claim that it is unique in the sense that it is the only way of discouraging piracy; I claim that it is one specific way that I invented: the use of a key that is dependent on and requires the entry of "VERIFIABLE PRIVATE information" (basically, a credit card number). Significant improvements on existing techniques are patentable -- otherwise the guy who invented the car would have been told "well, it's just like a horse and buggy, only with a motor."
I really did not want to start a thread selling my invention or discussing the details of what prior art it may or may not "read on" as the patent folks say. (I'll be happy to do that privately if anyone wishes.) My whole point was that I came up with something clever, and that copyright would not protect it at all, but I still think that if it has any significant commercial potential (and so far it has not) then I should be entitled to a share of that success -- and that a software patent is the proper vehicle for achieving that. On another note, I think you may misunderstand "expression," at least as the intellectual property folks use the term. Expression is not a patent term, one way or the other. If I wrote a tight spec for a program, and had two people implement independently, they would write totally different programs that produced the same exact result (hopefully!). Two different expressions -- two separately copyrightable works -- but the same function. A change in the specs would go to function and beyond expression. Patent is entirely about function; copyright about expression. Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Chase, John Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2006 9:50 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: What does a patent do that copyright does not? But how does your invention differ substantially from, say, the technique used to validate my license for Tom Brennan's VISTA terminal emulator? To "activate" my copy of VISTA, it required me to enter my name exactly as I had spelled it on the purchase order, along with a product key furnished by Tom Brennan, presumably generated in a similar manner to your key. The only visible difference is requiring my name rather than a credit card number, so it appears you've only changed the "expression" of an existing technique. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
