What do you mean by derived as opposed to isomorphic? The two terms are not exclusive.

It might, or it might not, if, for example, logic for causing the computer to paint the screen in blue paisley has been done before.

"Has not been established" or "has been established as not patentable"? Also, again, what do you mean by logic gates vs. sequential imperative instructions, because the two are not necessarily exclusive.

Yes, they do - the patent claims begin with a preamble that states whether they recite a machine or apparatus, or a method. That's presumptively conclusive evidence.

"strongly resemble", "ignoring"... Although useful for a doctoral thesis, glossing over steps is usually not acceptable in a legal conclusion.

Sure, if the algorithm is already done by hand. But what if you come up with some novel, nonobvious algorithm, like a way to calculate interstellar warp coordinates? Then doing it either by hand or on a computer is novel... The question is whether it would still be patent eligible or not.
Under Bilski and CLS and current jurisprudence, a claim just to the algorithm would not be patentable... because someone could do it by hand. But if the claim had enough some additional limitations that specifically recited the computer, such that while you could do the algorithm by hand, you couldn't do the algorithm in the claim by hand, then it would be patentable (e.g. say it included a step of transmitting the data to a cloud service for distributed processing - that particular step may not be novel, but remember that the rest of the claim includes your novel, nonobvious algorithm).

That's currently the rule: computers are known, and if your method is known, then simply doing it on a computer is not patentable.
However, what if you have to do additional steps to make it work on a computer? For example, in the real world, we can look at someone and easily recognize their face as belonging to a friend... but machine vision and facial recognition is really, really difficult. There's a whole bunch of processing that has to be done, because computers don't inherently recognize faces. So, while the broad concept of "recognizing a face, on a computer" wouldn't be patentable, "detecting a first location corresponding to a first eye; identifying a second location corresponding to a second eye; determining an approximate facial width based on the inter-eye distance; identifying a mouth shape in a third location; etc., etc.," would be.

Again, same as above - if the real world item is known, then simply simulating it isn't patentable... unless you have to do other things, or make approximations that don't exist in the real world. For example, the real world has a sky, and clouds, and changes smoothly from dark blue to light blue as you get near the sun... but doing volumetric lighting simulations and simulated Rayleigh and Mie scattering in a way that doesn't kill your GPU is really difficult. Why shouldn't a narrower claim to those be patentable?

And again, that's how it works. You can't get a claim to "transmitting data over a network, wherein the network is wireless" but you can get one directed to some of the steps you have to do with wireless communications that you don't have to do with wired communications, like the additional signal/noise processing, frequency heterodyning, burst interference avoidance, spread spectrum broadcasting, etc.

Or stuff that you only have to do with virtual machines, like dynamically provisioning them based on load, or having dozens of virtual machines sharing a single hardware network interface and single memory bus, and transparently distributing packets to them in such a way that each machine doesn't realize there are others using the card.

Alone, yes, but why not together? Since you acknowledge that the antenna is patentable and the bus is patentable, then why can't I claim a device comprising an antenna that receives a signal, a bus that transports the signal, and a processor that executes an algorithm to convert the signal into geographic coordinates? I'm sure we can all agree that devices are patentable, yes?

Bear in mind also that qualifying as a machine simply distinguishes it from being an abstract idea... it's not enough to make something patentable on its own: it still has to be new and nonobvious, but those are different questions, with different tests - the most revolutionary, novel, nonobvious abstract idea that's ever been invented is still unpatentable, not because it's not new, but because it's not tied to a machine. Software that's tied to a machine only meets that first hurdle - it still needs to jump over the others.

Why not? And no, I'm not asking "which Supreme Court decision said that you can't patent algorithms," I'm asking why they said that. It's not an arbitrary rule - there was reasoning behind it, and it's the reasoning that you need to look at when determining whether a machine executing novel and nonobvious software is patentable or not, not the one sentence of dicta.

No, because, after the first one, the others would likely be obvious in view of the first one. Nonobvious, however, is a separate requirement from whether something is drawn to patent eligible subject matter. And the judge's point here was that a programmed computer is a machine, and machines are patent eligible. They still have to be new and nonobvious and clearly described, but they're not immediately disqualified regardless of how new or nonobvious they are, the way pure software is.

If you came up with a brand new technology, not even 300 ms old, that was just a series of mental steps - say, a method for calculating time travel coordinates, or the like - it could be the newest, most revolutionary technology in the world... and still not be eligible for a patent, because it's just mental steps. But a machine is different. Embody your brand new method in a machine, and it may be patent eligible. That's what the judge was trying to say.

Since I was citing and discussing the statutes involved, any reasonable person would assume that I was using an analogy to simplify the discussion, rather than discussing something unrelated having to do with design patents. And then there's you.

Now, would you like to go back and add something to the discussion, rather than just trying to be condescending and failing?

Yes, that is entirely ignorant of you: you acknowledge that you need a physical antenna to triangulate a signal, but then suggest that a person can do it without using any hardware. You're being inconsistent.

Allow me to help, since the prior post went over your head:
A person or a computer can perform calculations on input values and output processed values.
A person cannot necessarily receive those values directly regardless of form: people don't have antennas, don't have A/D converters, don't have signal amplifiers, etc. Similarly, while a person can output a set of values, without some additional hardware, a person cannot transmit a packet, close a switch, render a frame on a display, etc. That's the distinction - just performing calculations isn't patentable; doing something with them or doing something to get them is.

Except that 35 USC 101 explicitly says that processes are patentable, and a process is an algorithm. You have to go a bit deeper into understanding why the Supreme Court said that algorithms weren't patentable to understand the distinction. Specifically, they wanted to draw a line between thought and action: because one of the remedies for patent infringement is an injunction, you have to be able to order people to stop infringing. And while you can tell someone to stop performing the process for curing rubber, for example, you can't tell them to stop thinking of the equation for determining when to remove the rubber from the oven.

One way of drawing this line...

... is to require that the claimed process has steps that you or I can't do with a pencil and piece of paper, no matter how slowly. So, for example, a patent claim of triangulating a position given three signals is not patentable, because we could do that on paper. But a patent claim that includes receiving those signals from a GPS satellite with an antenna is patentable. Think of it as a system - there's a black box that takes an input of some numbers and outputs some other numbers. You or I could do that as well as a computer (albeit slower), and it's unpatentable. But add on additional hardware that provides that input, or additional hardware that reacts to that output, and it's no longer something that we can do solely in our heads or on paper - you now need to perform an action of getting signals from something else, or closing a switch elsewhere, or whatnot. And so that's patentable, and you can be ordered not to take those physical steps that would infringe.

35 USC 101 requires that a claimed invention be directed to patent eligible subject matter: a process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter (it also requires that the invention is useful). The courts have decided that these categories are very broad, but don't include "abstract ideas" (though that term is never defined), laws of nature, or natural phenomena.

If the claimed invention passes that low threshold for 101, 35 USC 102 requires that the invention must be new or novel. That's a higher bar, but not a huge one - if I'm the first person to make a red car and claim that in a patent application, that's new, even if blue cars existed.

If the claimed invention passes that threshold, then 35 USC 103 requires that the invention must be nonobvious. The red car is obvious if blue cars existed, even if no one has ever made a red car before.

So, for example, if some piece of software causes a computer to paint the screen in red paisley and that's never been done before, it's new... but it's obvious and still patent ineligible.

The problem is when these get confused or conflated into a single requirement, because obviousness and novelty require evidence, while subject matter eligibility does not. And so, you get cases like CLS or Bilski where the judges want to invalidate the patent because it's stupidly obvious, but they have no evidence on the record... so they declare it an abstract idea and invalid. In particular, here, the judges started carving out everything from the patent claim that made it non-abstract, declaring it irrelevant, until the only thing left was abstract. The outcome may be the right one, but it's for the wrong reason - it's like finding a murderer guilty because you hate his face. Maybe he was actually the murderer, but you're finding him guilty for the wrong reason.

1790.

That's because it's tough to find (USPTO Examiners search their own internal databases first, then Google, and then move on to things like IEEE databases. They're not typically searching Github), and if it needs interpretation, then people will disagree about what it shows. For example, if you wanted a patent that claims "1. An operating system, comprising: Linux," then your patent application is going to be anticipated by Linux. However, if you wanted a patent that claims some esoteric way for managing memory in the network stack, and someone has done something similar but not exactly the same, then maybe there's an argument that your implementation is different in a nonobvious way.

... and...

... are both entirely true. As the article notes, in order for a patent to be enforceable, all of the inventors have to be properly named on the patent - no extra inventors, and no leaving anyone out - and they all need to either assign the patent to a common entity, or agree to jointly participate in any lawsuit:

So, yes, it would be difficult, if not nigh-impossible, to enforce these FOSS patents.
Let me repeat that...
Enforce these Free and Open Source Software patents.

There seems to be some fundamental confusion about purpose. And who are you going to enforce them against? The trolls, as the summary suggests? But they're trolls because they don't make any products, and if they don't make anything, then they can't infringe. So, what, in the name of "defending against patent trolls", Free OSS foundations are going to start suing manufacturers such as Microsoft, Google, Apple, or Red Hat?

All of that said, there is a very good reason the FOSS community should be filing patents - patent Examiners look to their own databases first for prior art. If FOSS inventors file patent applications, let them be published, and then abandon the application to the public domain, that will add to the set of available prior art and make it more difficult for trolls to get patents. And since you never intend for such applications to issue, they can be drafted and filed very cheaply: throw in your source code, your comments or flow charts or functional specs, slap a single claim on the end, and you're good enough to publish.

Depends on the terms of the settlement agreement. Frequently, there will be a clause that says that future royalty payments are terminated if the patents are invalidated. Rarely - as in almost never - there might be a provision to return some past payments. And similarly rarely, there are contracts where royalty payments continue even if the patent is invalidated.
The settlement is just a contract - whatever you agree to in that contract is what happens.

Generally, when invalidating a patent, you go for the most recent prior art that's still "prior" to the priority date of the patent - there's less wiggle room when you say "this was done 6 months earlier by X" as opposed to "this was done 20 years previously by Y", because with the latter, they can respond "if so, how come no one exploited it for 20 years?"

The fact that you think a court should find someone guilty if you can show they have the requisite mens rea for a crime but can't show the actus reus means you apparently missed everything after the first 10 minutes in your criminal law class.