Re: [music-dsp] damn patents (was New patent application on uniformly partitioned convolution) [OT]
On Tue, 08 Feb 2011 01:04:53 + Richard Dobson richarddob...@blueyonder.co.uk wrote: I can't put a lot of time into this reply, too much else to do. But I Understood. Me too, just a few days off for hellraising and then back to the grind too. Appreciate your banter on this Richard. Engineers know how to do more with less, while the rest of us manage to do a little with rather a lot. Charitable enough? Sure, sure, clear enough I got that. And it's a compliment to all engineers. My point is that it makes engineers one dimensional if the only consideration is money. Sometimes us engineers can do things safely (in ADA) or creatively, or with other considerations depending on what's important. Except that all of a sudden people want to run a music studio on their iPod. Engineers needed! Yep, well theres a few stories I can tell you :) RjDj just passed the 3 millon download mark with the inception app. I never suggested the system was working. Indeed I agree that it is not. get it working properly so that it ~can~ protect the little guys. We can do that. What we have in common is far more valuable than anything else. It's hard to defend a radical position without seeming a precious, and self-absorbed asshole, but I am very sincere and have thought it through for many years. Now, it needs serious hardware to get it viable for the consumer in real Nothing like an idea who's time has come. Maybe its the right idea, but wrong time and you need to hang in there. I spent 5 years mulling over theories of procedural audio, reading papers and books by Perry Cook and others, impatient with why people didn't think like what I was seeing in game audio possibilities. It wasn't until 2005 that it was obvious things were coming to fruition, and 6 years further still having to work hard to push forward, but there's an unmistakable trajectory to the project now. I think there's a lull in music production, as an art, except on fringes at present, and new opportunities for new synthesis methods will come on the wave of the next revival. best, andy -- Andy Farnell padawa...@obiwannabe.co.uk -- dupswapdrop -- the music-dsp mailing list and website: subscription info, FAQ, source code archive, list archive, book reviews, dsp links http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/music-dsp http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/music-dsp
Re: [music-dsp] damn patents (was New patent application on uniformly partitioned convolution) [OT]
On Mon, 07 Feb 2011 02:29:29 + Richard Dobson richarddob...@blueyonder.co.uk wrote: On 06/02/2011 18:53, Andy Farnell wrote: Since there is nothing to divide the line between this virtual device The DX7 is an automaton. But in principle it can be modeled by a UTM. That does not mean there is no dividing line between them. Hi Richard, Thanks for the considered and thoughtful reply. I want to jump quickly though the following points because it is the end of your message where things get interesting. Well they're the same thing, you may say. Of course, I ~wouldn't~. It is best in these sorts of discussions not to I'm sorry to put words into your mouth. Yes, I need to be careful with any kind of theatre... that voice was the idealised interlocutor... not you specifically... how _most_ people react to that. But I assert, they are the same thing in practice. We are arguing as experts of course, which actually makes this interpretation more difficult, and less useful. And I'm ironically guilty of the same behaviour I hate by substituting the general case for the specific. Yikes. sorry! Speed and acceleration are likewise related, but not the same - one is the rate of change of the other. ... You will have to give your definition of congruent - speed and acceleration are I suspect not congruent, unless all you mean is that Yes I mean they are trivially derivative. Note trivially. And this is what demands a symbolic representation to put your money where your mouth is, at which point, as I continue to argue, a patent is neither effective nor appropriate (compared to copyright). ... much that is interesting and true snipped In this respect I cite the often-quoted definition of an engineer: someone who can build for two bucks what anyone can build for three. That's one pretty narrow definition of an engineer, and a little uncharitable. Sure you can get those kind of engineers to build you a Tahoma bridge or solid fuel boosters for your space shuttle, but the dollar saved will cost you two. Here's a real engineer for ya: http://www.tc.umn.edu/~frede005/Brunel.html Notice the hat. That's what you pay the extra dollar for. I prefer this definition by Mr N. W. Dougherty: The ideal engineer is a composite ... He is not a scientist, he is not a mathematician, he is not a sociologist or a writer but he may use the knowledge and techniques of any or all of these disciplines in solving engineering problems. Sometimes our engineering problems are social. But a little pressure here, a little oil there, and always the gentle force of the better argument... :) Should Yamaha have been able to monopolise the use of FM in music synthesis as a result? Categorically no! No! No! No! But they couldn't, and didn't. Wherever did that idea come from? Do a search on Yamaha Patent FM. Does that look like a widespread interpretation that is clear and unambiguous to you? My argument is simple at this point. Development was stifled. It is the effects, not the letter of the law that interests me. Those (ordinary developers) who are threatened by a patent do not have the financial means to get clarification, so there's no point raising the possibility of challenge here. I just came back from a meeting at a major research university where they are so afraid of submarine patents in unrelated areas that they have no choice but to jump in an take a risk because the complexity and cost of search is overwhelming. Does that sound like a system that is working? To use a drastic analogy from tin pot dictator politics; if I allow one group of people to carry arms and legalise self defence, that has the chilling effect of another group staying at home on election day. Without writing any laws to some effect, I can obtain that effect. It is the effects of software patents that is the problem. They cannot avoid having this effect because they are insufficiently well defined. If they were so defined they would be written as code and qualify for copyright not patenting. Thus I return to my argument. sell a ~physical implementation~, i.e. in the form of a real-time Are you saying that no software implementations of FM, whether in stand-alone or plugin form, whether free or for sale, were ever held up or stifled by the existence and interpretation of the Yamaha FM patent? What about hardware implementations that didn't infringe on Yamaha's patent but never made to market because of fear, uncertainty and doubt? That _never_ happened right? I think there almost certainly are strong arguments to be made against at least the mechanisms and implementations of software patents, but I suspect these are not them. I take the inability to distinguish general and special cases without recourse to lengthy and expensive examination by experts to be a knockdown argument against them. Who pays for the better expert, or can hang on making appeals the longest wins. There is no room for this kind
Re: [music-dsp] damn patents (was New patent application on uniformly partitioned convolution) [OT]
Off the top of my head (no guarantee I'm recalling correctly--I'll leave it to others to fill in details ;-) : NED licensed Yamaha's patents for the Synclavier. Casio used a slightly different technique (phase distortion synthesis). Yamaha did sue Casio--I think maybe Yamaha eventually won or they settled, but it was near the expiration of their patents, and FM was long off its heyday anyway. ConBrio died before Yamaha did anything more than threaten. On Feb 7, 2011, at 3:54 PM, Tom Wiltshire wrote: On 7 Feb 2011, at 20:54, Andy Farnell wrote: Do a search on Yamaha Patent FM. Does that look like a widespread interpretation that is clear and unambiguous to you? My argument is simple at this point. Development was stifled. This is an interesting case to try and make. Trying to think of other synths that used FM from the era of the Yamaha/Stanford patent, I came up with: Synclavier Casio CZ series, VZ series ConBrio ADS These synths all clearly have FM sound-producing facilities, and were all developed independently from Yamaha/Standford. Does three other manufacturers working in the area constitute stifled development? In my view, it probably still does. The DX7 was a game-changing product, and many (mostly American) manufacturers went to the wall when they found they couldn't compete. That said, Sequential came up with vector synthesis (which they might not have done if they could have made a copycat me-too FM synth). T. -- dupswapdrop -- the music-dsp mailing list and website: subscription info, FAQ, source code archive, list archive, book reviews, dsp links http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/music-dsp http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/music-dsp
Re: [music-dsp] damn patents (was New patent application on uniformly partitioned convolution) [OT]
On 07/02/2011 20:54, Andy Farnell wrote: .. In this respect I cite the often-quoted definition of an engineer: someone who can build for two bucks what anyone can build for three. That's one pretty narrow definition of an engineer, and a little uncharitable. Sure you can get those kind of engineers to build you a Tahoma bridge or solid fuel boosters for your space shuttle, but the dollar saved will cost you two. Here's a real engineer for ya: I can't put a lot of time into this reply, too much else to do. But I will paraphrase my quote as follows, as I fear you have completely misread its import: An engineer is someone who can make a process run in real time on a small slow cheap CPU that anyone can make run in real time on a large fast expensive one. Engineers know how to do more with less, while the rest of us manage to do a little with rather a lot. Charitable enough? There is already talk on the bench that computers are now so fast that there is no need to bother with code optimisation any more. Except that all of a sudden people want to run a music studio on their iPod. Engineers needed! .. I just came back from a meeting at a major research university where they are so afraid of submarine patents in unrelated areas that they have no choice but to jump in an take a risk because the complexity and cost of search is overwhelming. Does that sound like a system that is working? I never suggested the system was working. Indeed I agree that it is not. You want to dismantle it altogether, which I suspect is unlikely. It was supposed to protect the solo inventor against exploitation by the big guys. That is still IMO a good idea. Rather than throw it out, I am suggesting that there must be an, um, pragmatic engineering solution - get it working properly so that it ~can~ protect the little guys. .. Are you saying that no software implementations of FM, whether in stand-alone or plugin form, whether free or for sale, were ever held up or stifled by the existence and interpretation of the Yamaha FM patent? What about hardware implementations that didn't infringe on Yamaha's patent but never made to market because of fear, uncertainty and doubt? That _never_ happened right? I can't answer huge generalities of this kind. I am certainly not aware of any such case. I was watching both the industry and academia really closely all through the 80s and beyond as I was writing a reference book about it all. The cheap FM chip in the early Soundblaster cards (and very widely licensed at clearly not high cost as those cards were cheap cheap cheap) is still revered in some quarters. If you have some specific cases, you need to cite them. plugins is in any case somewhat of an anachronism with respect to the FM patent. That expired around 1995; the first spec for VST appeared in 1996 according to Wikipedia. Around the time, in fact, when a lot of people mostly of the younger generation brought up on digital were claiming we no longer needed live musicians, orchestras, etc, as you could now do everything digitally. My impression is, FWIW, that the success of the DX7 and its kin brought digital audio to the consciousness of the mainstream, both for the general musical public and in academia, and triggered a massive flourishing of innovation and ideas everywhere - it created a market where there basically wasn't one before, it made analogue synths (for a while) absolutely out of fashion as everyone went digital. We have to remember that digital audio was around well before the analogue synth revolution epitomised by Switched-On Bach and the MiniMoog; but confined entirely to the few departments that ran software such as MUSIC V and had access to audio converters. And remember that Stanford first showed the FM idea to Hammond (of organ fame) and they saw no point in it at all. So much for being obvious. It really wasn't, at the time (all those pesky Bessel functions). Hindsight is always 20/20, etc. ... (BTW, I'm a ~particularly~ deserving inventor of something not a million miles from FM, but it needs HPC-style resources to run in real time). Well that's cool. Maybe I've got a couple hundred thousand and looking for a project to put some money into. Problem is, I'm a bit nervous about this patent mess. Tell you what, you fund a patent search and come back to me with irrefutable proof that your design doesn't infringe on any existing patents and we will talk. ;) It's all in the public domain already, and called Transformational FM, made possible by the Sliding Phase Vocoder. Presented at ICMC 2007 (with John Chowning in the audience - I suspect he was somewhat underwhelmed). And yes, it's in Csound. Sound examples here: http://dream.cs.bath.ac.uk/SDFT/index.html Now, it needs serious hardware to get it viable for the consumer in real time. Unlikely as a plugin for many years yet, if at all. But it's already in the public domain so it can't be
Re: [music-dsp] damn patents (was New patent application on uniformly partitioned convolution) [OT]
On Mon, 31 Jan 2011 21:23:52 + Richard Dobson richarddob...@blueyonder.co.uk wrote: On 31/01/2011 12:53, Andy Farnell wrote: Er, they aren't, and never have been. Hey Richard, Sure they aren't allowed. But they de facto _have_ _been_ allowed, and that's why we're having this discussion. If the key to the argument for this stumbling mistake is the ill formed notion of a virtual device then it will fall over easily. Software patents were simply never a considered, rational move. Instead they are a sleepwalk into a dream of market appeasement, based on a foggy understanding of the relationship between a real device and a virtual one. As you say they recognise the notion, but haven't thought about the definition. Since there is nothing to divide the line between this virtual device and a Universal Turing Machine, then there's no partition between the abstract and the concrete. In the former case the machine definition will be written into the claim which is concretized and becomes copyrighted, in the latter case the claim fails the idea (abstractness) test. --snip Hence the classic original FM patent. It uses multiplication (can't be It's cool you picked FM, it helps develop an argument surrounding ambiguity and broadness: In fact there never was a patent on FM. There was a patent on phase modulation based on manipulation of an accumulator in a specific way. Well they're the same thing, you may say. Exactly! I say. So, why do we make this mistake? Because FM and PM are congruent, that is to say there are different mathematical representations with possibly different code flows that amount to the same thing. Frequency Modulation became the marketing phrase. Maybe because a bunch of execs thought it sounded cooler. But that's not the end of it because, I forget who, maybe Beauchamp or Arfib, who showed at a similar time, that FM and wave-shaping could be considered congruent. You can see modulation as dynamic wave-shaping in the case that the shaper is another oscillator rather than a table. Therefore, it really became an interpretation (in code) based on whether you were using a stored or generated function whether what you call FM or wave-shaping is your technology. This is why in my book I was quite clear to draw a distinction, as is found throughout design theory, between model, method and implementation. So what significance does this have, given we all agree that so called ideas, abstract mathematical formulations, even if they are functional, cannot be admitted as patents in the absence of a concrete design and purpose? Since Aristotle, a trisection of realms, often encountered in social and psychological enquiry, distinguishes the real, the imaginary and the symbolic. Symbols and the rules of their combination are a shared, public realm, though unique ideas may be communicated by combinations of atomic symbols. This is something we grasp easily in computer science and has bearing on much of software engineering. Classically the symbolic mediates the real and the imaginary. Outside computing it's normally seen as a madness or social malady when there is sufficient confusion of any of these realms. The patent system does not properly distinguish these things for software. It was never designed for software. Software (purely symbolic) was shoe-horned into the patent system to meet industrial demands much too fast. It stops at the symbolic and merely implies the real (design). Since both abstract and concrete symbolic forms are possible there is a SIGNIFICANT AMBIGUITY surrounding any attempt at a software patent. What did this cause? IMHO, a great injustice. One of many mischiefs software patents perpetrate echoing through the last decade. Should Yamaha have been able to obtain the patent they did? Let's say yes, (keeping aside my other objections to software patents). Should Yamaha have been able to monopolise the use of FM in music synthesis as a result? Categorically no! No! No! No! Notwithstanding that there were other uses of FM in music synthesis prior to the Yamaha patent, the point is that the interpretation of the patent, in reality, by people who were not qualified or diligent enough to understand its narrow symbolic meaning, was too broad. You may conclude development was stifled. Why? Because the patent, while for a very specific implementation, was interpreted and defended as a claim on a broad class of methods. Everything else in that class was effectively prohibited during this time. Were Yamaha rationally justified in filing a patent, which was on a design, but was interpreted as being on a process? I'm sure they didn't intend to muddy this boundary but given that it was actually a VLSI/ASIC job that would have taken at least an electron microscope and months to reverse engineer, probably no. Maybe Yamaha were over-eager and overreached in their claims. The claims were certainly over-interpreted. Ross raised
Re: [music-dsp] damn patents (was New patent application on uniformly partitioned convolution) [OT]
Hi Andy Andy Farnell wrote: AXIOM: Ideas should not be patentable. Period. Do I need to explain this? Sorry, you've lost me a bit here. Pehaps you do need to explain it.. see if I'm twisting your words below or if you find that I'm addressing your position (of course I don't expect you to agree with my argument): Are you suggesting by stating the above axiom that algorithms are _simply_ ideas and that for this reason alone they shouldn't be patentable? Is that the basis of your objection to software patents? That the patent system should only apply to mechanisms that operate soley in the world of atoms (like a design for a spiral ham slicer)? and not to mechanisms that operate soely or partially in the information domain (like a design for a particular exection structure for partitioned convolution) -- in spite of the fact that the information domain is now intimately interfaced as an active participant in much human (economic/industrial) activity? I can understand Knuth's criticism of the futility of trying to distinguish between numerical and abstract-structural patentable concepts. But I can't understand how you can equate _functional_ information structures (whether algorithm or mathematical theorem) performing in an active role as an executing computer program with all other ideas and say sorry, that's off limits, not patentable. Given the intent of the patent system to grant monopoly rights over novel inventions I fail to see see how that's a valid distinction to draw unless your real objection is to all patents and you're just trying to keep them out of the software domain (and that is another argument entirely). Much human activity is now conducted in the world of bits and bytes. Algorithms are functional mechanisms that operate in the world of bits and bytes. Why shouldn't they be patentable? Simply saying because they are ideas isn't an argument on its own. Why should we distinguish between a mechanism that performs partitioned convolution by juggling coloured marbles and one that performs partitioned convolution by switching bits? A patent doesn't prohibit you from having the idea, thinking about an algorithm, or using the patented thing in research (these are other common things you do with ideas). I'm pretty sure you can also write books about patented things, build new theories upon them, etc. A software patent does place restrictions on use of that idea in its role as a concrete functional information mechanism (e.g. in a computer system). I'm beginning to think that your previously stated moral objections are more concerned with the whole notion and structure of intellectual property as a legal construct than they are with software patents in particular -- would that be a reasonable characterisation? In that light a lot of your previous statements make a lot more sense to me. Ross. -- dupswapdrop -- the music-dsp mailing list and website: subscription info, FAQ, source code archive, list archive, book reviews, dsp links http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/music-dsp http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/music-dsp
Re: [music-dsp] damn patents (was New patent application on uniformly partitioned convolution) [OT]
I am not completely against patents per se. As far I understand things, at least in US Patent Law is that there is no formal peer review process. For the most part, the only time you see an application is after a patent is granted. At that point its largely too late. If you have a patent, a large entity could challenge it, and you can't afford to defend it if you are small. If you are small, you probably can't challenge afford to challenge a patent. If there is a requirement for peer review, then many frivolous patents (or at least some of the claims) could be dispensed with quickly. Software patents are probably the best case. I expect that many products have already used some of the techniques that others have reinvented. I have at least one algorithm that I invented and I have never seen it published. I protect it strictly by copyright and trade secret. Maybe others have also invented it as well. Tukey Cooley thought they invented the FFT which I think we would all agree is a pretty cool algorithm. It turns out that Gauss beat them to it by about 150 years. I think the other problem with patents is that too much emphasis is placed on who files first. In many cases, an idea occurs at nearly the same time. We all know who Alexander Bell was. Who remembers Elisha Gray? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Gray_and_Alexander_Bell_telephone_controversy Anyway - just a continuation of our rant... Al Clark Danville Signal On 1/31/2011 11:11 AM, robert bristow-johnson wrote: On Jan 31, 2011, at 12:02 PM, Andy Farnell wrote: Hi Ross, Are you suggesting by stating the above axiom that algorithms are _simply_ ideas and that for this reason alone they shouldn't be patentable? Yes I am, you've got it. An algorithm is unsufficiently concrete to deserve a patent, it is an abstraction, a generalisation. Andy, what kind of thing (if any) would you say *is* patentable? must such a thing be a physical object? -- r b-j r...@audioimagination.com Imagination is more important than knowledge. -- dupswapdrop -- the music-dsp mailing list and website: subscription info, FAQ, source code archive, list archive, book reviews, dsp links http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/music-dsp http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/music-dsp -- dupswapdrop -- the music-dsp mailing list and website: subscription info, FAQ, source code archive, list archive, book reviews, dsp links http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/music-dsp http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/music-dsp
Re: [music-dsp] damn patents (was New patent application on uniformly partitioned convolution) [OT]
Hi Andy Are you suggesting by stating the above axiom that algorithms are _simply_ ideas and that for this reason alone they shouldn't be patentable? Yes I am, you've got it. An algorithm is unsufficiently concrete to deserve a patent, it is an abstraction, a generalisation. Ok... An algorithm is not performing in an active role as an executing computer program, not any more than an imaginary line like the equator can be used to tie up a bundle of sticks. It would have to become computer program to do that. Can you clarify what you mean by a computer program? Do you mean compilable or interpretable source and/or object code or would you accept widely understood, translatable and human-readable pseudocode in your definition of a computer program? If I translate from one programming language to another is that considered a derivative work for copyright purposes? At that point it would meet the requirements for copyright which would be sufficient for its commercial protection. There seems to be some kind of judgement in that statement about what you consider sufficient for commercial protection but I can't quite put my finger on it. Would you be able to interpret the following hypothetical situation for me please? I'm not 100% sure whether I've captured the possibilities of copyright protection correctly so I may have made some wild mistake.. would be interesting to hear what you think... Scenario: I invest 1000s of person-years devising a completely original ultra-fast zero-latency convolution algorithm. I take 2 days to code it in C. I publish my new invention as copyrighted C code. Two possible infringing situations arise: A) You get a copy of my copyrighted publication, directly translate the C code to Fortran (thus creating a derivative work) and release a new commercial software package based on it. I sue you for copyright infringement and win. B) You derive an abstract algorithmic definition from my C code and work out a way to translate it into Scheme in such a way that the structure of the source code is difficult to relate to the original but the structure of the algorithm remains the unchanged. You commercialise. I have no practical protection because on the basis of the evidence the relationship of the two codes would be undecidable, or at the least, less decidable than the current software patent regime. Here are a couple of other possible scenarios that are currently protected by software patents that I don't _think_ would be protected under copyright law, but I guess you disapprove of these anyway: C) You independently write/invent a C program that is substantially the same as my copyrighted C program (I think this is realistic for something like a convolution algorithm). You can prove you wrote it independently. I get no protection. D) Person X writes a text book about convolution algorithms and produces a non-executable diagramatic explanation of my copyrighted C-code invention (they read my code, they didn't indepently invent the algorithm). You read the text book and write a new implementation of my algorithm. I get no protection. Do the first two scenarios fit with your views of what should constitute sufficient commercial protection? Keep in mind that in the above I could replace copyrighted C code with copyrighted machine code and the same transformations and litigation would be possible in principle (D might be less likely if I only publish machine code, especially if you approve of DMCA-style anti-reverse engineering laws). Ross. -- dupswapdrop -- the music-dsp mailing list and website: subscription info, FAQ, source code archive, list archive, book reviews, dsp links http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/music-dsp http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/music-dsp
Re: [music-dsp] damn patents (was New patent application on uniformly partitioned convolution) [OT]
On 31/01/2011, Ross Bencina rossb-li...@audiomulch.com wrote: Scenario: I invest 1000s of person-years devising a completely original ultra-fast zero-latency convolution algorithm. Might I humbly suggest that the life extension technology which would enable you to take thousands of person-years to develop anything on your own would be of considerably more commercial value than pretty much anything you would choose to develop? -- dupswapdrop -- the music-dsp mailing list and website: subscription info, FAQ, source code archive, list archive, book reviews, dsp links http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/music-dsp http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/music-dsp
Re: [music-dsp] damn patents (was New patent application on uniformly partitioned convolution) [OT]
On 31/01/2011 12:53, Andy Farnell wrote: .. AXIOM: Ideas should not be patentable. Period. Er, they aren't, and never have been. Any patent has to describe a ~device~ - a machine, a thing that can be built - hence the ubiquitous term preferred embodiment. If an invention cannot be expressed in a buildable machine or device, it cannot be granted a patent. the patent is supposed to supply sufficient information for someone ordinarily skilled in the art' to build it, while also being something that that person cannot be expected to invent for himself based on that ordinary art. You can't patent the 'idea' of a sorting machine; but in principle you can patent a specific buildable machine that implements sorting to solve some problem. So you may be able to patent a machine that sorts potatoes, threshes wheat, etc. Or, given the existence of such a machine, patent a new one that does it faster/cheaper/safer/whatever using some defined 'embodyable' process. The modern difficulty arises simply because we (public at large, etc, and so also patent offices) now recognise the notion of a virtual device - a machine that does something, solves some problem, but which exists predominantly in software form. So a machine that reverberates a sound is a patentable device. An audio plugin is not in this sense an algorithm any more than a spring reverb is an algorithm (though it can of course be modelled mathematically)- it is [claimed to be] a ~device~ that does something. The distinction is that multiple devices that are outwardly identical, may embody different processes internally. Maybe literally the only difference is that one does it faster than the other. So you can't patent the idea of a reverb plugin, any more than you can patent the idea of a weaving machine. But you may be able to patent an embodiment that does it faster/cheaper/better-blahblahblah. Hence the classic original FM patent. It uses multiplication (can't be patented), and a trigonometrical identity (can't be patented), and even the idea of modulating one oscillator with another (can't be patented), but does so in a particuarly novel and structured way so as to solve a problem - how to generate lots of dynamically variable partials, whether harmonic or inharmonic, controllably, at audio rates, very economically; at a time when the ordinary art consisted of fundamentally analog subtractive or additive synthesis. FM already existed in the context of radio transmission; the Chowning patent applied a known principle in a new area of application; and included the instructions and knowledge required for controlling it (theory of Bessel functions, etc). Thus, you can't patent the known general process (algorithm) of frequency modulation, but you manifestly could patent its particular embodiment in a music synthesiser. Thus also, a patent that describes some new form of partitioned convolution could be patentable within the established terms of reference for a patent ~if~ it describes some non-trivial new improvement to existing methods, for some ~embodyable~ device. It is not trying to patent the idea of partitioned convolution (it can't, obviously). Whether it is in fact novel, or beyond the skills of those classified today as ordinarily skilled in the art is another question entirely. Now I may well dislike the idea of software patents myself, and agree there are far too many trivial non-novel patents around, but thinking they can somehow disappear is virtually on a par with hoping to design a perpetual motion machine. Governments around the globe (at least, if the UK is at all representative) are pressuring universities to transfer technology - realise as much economic value as possible from innovation, so that the pressure to patent first, then [optionally] publish, is increasing exponentially. Vice-Chancellors no long ask how does this increase knowledge? but do we own it?. Once it was realised that software could make money (wish I knew how!), the horse had bolted from the stable, never to return. So, arguments in favour of reform, and better scrutiny/peer review etc, are all good to make; but the modern software patent is a cash cow not only for companies (pity the poor individual inventor indeed!) but also de facto for government exchequers everywhere, and is I suspect here to stay. Richard Dobson -- dupswapdrop -- the music-dsp mailing list and website: subscription info, FAQ, source code archive, list archive, book reviews, dsp links http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/music-dsp http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/music-dsp
Re: [music-dsp] damn patents (was New patent application on uniformly partitioned convolution) [OT]
Hi Andy I wish I were worthy of quoting Blaise Pascal here, but instead I will just apologise for the rant... I think it has a bearing on all of us too. And thus you lure me in. But if people complain that this is getting boring, off-topic or ill-natured then let's quit it. (Subject changed) All I can offer you is my opinions, I can't help you with your misunderstandings about the nature of reality. A study of Shannon and Bohr might help you disentangle information from atoms. I doubt Shannon and Bohr will help me understand why different laws should apply to ideas about atoms and ideas about information structure though. We are not arguing that atoms should be treated differently from information (as goes the arguments regarding intellectual property and copyright). _All_ patents are intellectual property (designs, ideas, inventions, whatever you want to call them) whether they apply to software algorithms, mechanical mechanisms, chemical processes etc. Straight up, I'm confused as to whether you support software patents (if you want me to correct your misunderstandings) or whether you want to help reform them, which implies that you don't. Reforming them does not necessarily imply dismantling the patent system completely. I could support Software patents (in some cases) and at the same time wish to reform the system. I don't support software patents but I don't currently oppose them either. I definitely oppose some practices of those who use/abuse/exploit software patents. At the risk of falling off your pragmatic fence perhaps you could lean over enough for me to see which way you're pitching. I stated my position in an earlier email: I have a clear problem with obvious and trivial patents. I stated a proposed rule of thumb about what I think is trivial, Nigel has given some other ideas. To me, if those issues were resolved that would go a long way to reforming the system. I want to continue developing software. I would prefer not to have to deal with working around trivial patents and the legal risks of potentially violating patents I've never even heard of. On the other hand, I respect that patents provide a means to protect significant investment in RD and unlike your freinds at eurolinux I don't believe that Copyright or Trade Secrets are sufficient legal mechanisms to achieve this protection since neither can fully protect an abstract algorithmic invention. (Perhaps we could have something like the performing rights organisations do for songs -- if you use my registered algorithm you pay me an algorithm royalty.. maybe not, but you get the idea). As for dismantling the system completely, well I am still sitting on the fence. Not because I am unconvinced by your and other's appeals to the right to intellectual freedom, but because Patents are an economic mechanism that functions in the global industrial/economic domain (as I have said, a complex system, a complex dynamic system if you will -- I don't use these terms to shroud things as deep but to suggest a particular organic organisational dynamic that is quite different from a top-down organised logical system). Patents don't principally act to restrict intellectual freedom in academia, in research, or in my lounge room (although I expect you will come up with examples of the ways they do), they principally act to restrict commercial freedom -- and I think it is a complex economic question as to whether disallowing software patents (as an isolated act) would really lead to progress. There are arguments both ways (you and Nigel have discussed some of them), but I don't think it is possible to know exactly what impact it would have on the market and the mechanisms of software production -- you can't just take one piece of a poorly understood complex ecosystem like the global economy and change or remove a piece of it and expect to know all of the consequences. I'm not arguing for maintenance of the status quo, it's just that I'm not sure that disestablishmentarianism is the way forward. So perhaps the conversation should end here, since I am looking for economic and/or eco/sociological arguments and you are disinterested in discussing everything but the moral dimension (which I can't disagree with). Of course, I will go on anyway... :-)... Legal arguments do not interest me since that just begs the question. The problem _is_ a legal interpretation, therefore the Law sets the conditions for what counts as a fact. I am not interested in trying to use either reasoned or moral arguments on that wonky playing field. I know how that games goes, it's like arguing with creationists. The thing is, that _is_ the playing field. All this stuff is being played out in the complex dynamic system called the global economy. Perhaps I am morally bankrupt, but I have little sympathy for purist philosophical and moral arguments that are disconnected from effecting positive change in
