No ... bu happened before (Score 1)

This is Deja vu. If you'll remember the iterated system's founding patent. The patent centered around an alrorithm that transformed an image in to affine transformation coefficients. essentially a fractal transformation. What Barnsley of Iterated Systems found is a fast fractal transformation. Through implementation in software Barnsley (sp?) patented his mathematical insight. In one of the interviews he says that the key insight of the transform has to do with an operation on matrices, which backs up my claim it is mathematics. So I'm not surprised. Hopefully with tempered discussion we can find a succint boundary condition for patentability. (There is one but it was thrown out of the courts sometime ago) Hopefully the courts and patent office will establish new lines in this new age where most products will be intangible. One good step toward that is to contain the possibility of using patents as strategical weapons. Another step would be the banning of patent dumping and broad patents. Again there will be many difficulties.