Simply, No. For at least three reasons. 1. Copyright and inventions are different domains. Copyright protects a particular creative expression -- think of sonnets. Inventions are ways of doing things. Think cotton gin. They are different domains.
2. Only the inventor can patent something. One cannot read about something nifty and run out and patent it; one has to BE the inventor. 3. "Prior art" precludes obtaining patents (or, if push comes to shove, are a defense against the enforcement of a patent that turns out after issuance to be invalid because of prior art). Even if I wake up this morning and innocently "invent" something, if it turns out that you wrote a paper about it a couple of years ago then I am precluded from obtaining (or the courts would invalidate the patent and preclude me from enforcing) a patent on my invention (even if I never read your paper). I think this is pretty much what John is saying. I don't see how what John wrote could be interpreted as saying "inventing a software piece, copyrighting it ..., a third party can patent the invention ..." What John says is the opposite: "the putative 'invention', being already in the public domain, is non-novel and thus not patentable." BTW, copyright does not imply "public domain." 1. You mean "publically accessible." "Copyrighted and "public domain" are essentially antonyms. 2. See my other note on copyright. No registration (public disclosure) is necessary at all. 3. You can register a copyright with key elements redacted for trade secrecy reasons. Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Graham Hobbs Sent: Friday, January 11, 2013 4:42 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: OT: IBM #1 in number of patents for 2012. It's 20th year in a row to do so. John, Could one conclude then, that inventing a software piece, copyrighting it (thus on a Govt database thus a public domain), a third party can patent the invention and you could end up paying the third party to use your own software? I read your comments closely and the above cannot happen!+ ..? Graham ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Gilmore" <[email protected]> Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main To: <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, January 11, 2013 12:49 PM Subject: Re: OT: IBM #1 in number of patents for 2012. It's 20th year in a row to do so. > Graham, > > "Prior art" is a lawyer's term, not mine. If, say, I published a > paper in 1977 describing a scheme for extracting the square root of a > non-negative integer by successive subtraction, using the fact that > n^2 is the sum of the first n odd integers, i.e., > > 2^2 = 4 = 1 + 3 > 3^2 = 9 = 1 + 3 + 5 > 4^2 = 16 = 1+ 3 + 5 + 7 > 5^2 = 25 = 1 + 3 + 5 + 7 + 9 > . . . > > a later attempt to patent such a scheme would [almopst certainly] > fail. This relation is due to Fr Marin Mersenne (1588-1648), but > while no mathematical relation is itself patentable a device based > upon it, which might otherwise be patentable, would not be if my paper > describing such a device were known to the relevant Patent Office. > > Thus, while my paper might well be copyrighted (most published papers > are), that is not the point; what is crucial is that the putative ' > invention', being already in the public domain, is non-novel and thus > not patentable. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
