[Commons-Law] The Silly Software is Not Hardware Debate...

[Hasit seth]

Will keep this short...

Several times during software patent debate, anti-software patent actvists
(APA) always bring up the idea that software is not "hard" enough to be
worthy of patenting with several arguments like it is mathematics, that it
is literature (this one took the cake), it is only mental steps, it is found
in nature (whistle) and has always existed around, and so on.

I just wish to point out one Darwinian shift that is happening now:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/ . Apple's iPhone has buried the concept of a
phone having "buttons" that you can push, meaning physical buttons. The
buttons now exist as software, which the iPhone, meaning OSX running on
iPhone, displays as icons on its touch sensitive screens. Users interact by
touching the buttons and not pushing them since buttons are not physical
anymore. Will it be correct now to say that these software buttons could not
be patented (assuming they fulfil patentability criterias) because they are
"software", but they would be if they were real plastic or metal buttons? In
the same way, software that can solve equations cannot be wholesale ruled
out as unpatentable, because alternative to that software would be to create
a mechanical or electro-mechanical machine to do the same just Charles
Babbage did that with his Difference Engine and Analytical Engine (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage).

Do you see how deeply flawed the APA arguments are about nature of software?
I guess software and software patenting has followed Darwinian evolution,
but some people refuse to evolve their thinking. Darwin had something to say
about not evolving...
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