No, really, it's all good!! (Score 2)

You can see the actual ruling on this case at http://www.promega.com/taqlegal/991207/991207order .pdf in pdf format. What apparently happened was that some journal articles were published in 1976 and 1980 which characterized the enzyme Thermophile AQuaticus (TAQ) polymerase, which is at the heart of PCR. Apparently, the folks at Cetus found a "different" polymerase, or at least they thought so. It turns out that the "difference" was experimental error, and that TAQ polymerase was already known and characterized in the open literature, THUS, its application to DNA amplification was covered, or "anticipated". Then, according to the finding, Promega called Hoffmann-La Roche on this fact, and H-LR decided to ignore it. And it turns out, once again according to the finding, that the scientists involved give the appearance of trying to cover up this fact to save their a$$e$. (Now, that's a pretty strong claim!) It is clearly a reversal based on prior art, not some technicality, which is good news. Although, I do offer my condolences to Hoffmann-La Roche; a lot of hurtin' going on there. So, what you need to repeat this victory in the computer arena are copies of all the old DECUS material, and every other early computing group material, especially from Xerox, and then get Ralph Nader to do a class action suit against virtually all bogus "hi-tech" companies, listing every internet user as a plaintiff. Heck, all the CPM and apple groups probably had some sort of one-click apple networked transaction using hypercard going in the 80s. All you need is something that differs by only the protocol, and you've won (provided someone takes it to court). Now, I noticed that Hoffmann-La Roche might be in for some penalties in this case. I wonder if anyone knows what kind of penalties can be imposed? Can you really collect from a bunch of IPO's that are losing money? But allow me to expound (and expand) and get more to the point; the people who invented TAQ polymerase found a naturally occuring product and then found a use for it. Naturally occuring products don't come with any rules, so, this sort of invention really is an 'art' because it is 'artificially' imposed upon nature to accomplish some desired, but not neccesarily useful, thing. This is not the case with software combinations. The creators of un*x went to a lot of trouble so that commands could pipe into one another and be used in endless combinations. This same approach of interoperability was applied to TCP/IP and eventually to HTML. So, the inventors, by design, granted us the ability to connect all the commands on a system to one another. Thus, any combination of programs which are doing what their creators envisioned, and which are strung together with pipes and tees or shared memory is already covered by the inventions which went into the OS. To say that one specific set of commands should be pulled away from the public because some company thought of it first is ludicrous. It's like patenting a new end-game for chess. It's like patenting the use of a 1-4-5 chord progression to produce a "hip" attitude in a music recipient. (Am I preaching to the choir yet? :) There is no problem with getting copyrights to this stuff, it's done all the time. However, when you play within the rules set up by someone else, you can't patent your style of play. Can Michael Jordan patent a basketball move? No, he's playing by someone elses rules. But take image compression, as a counter example. If I develop a way to digitize a picture and then represent it with only 1/10000th of the original numbers representing digitized points, I have a) done something new and useful b) done something which doesn't require a computer. That's right!; long before computers, people were digitizing things and performing manual calculations on them, albeit small calculations. So, a patent should be granted in this because there were no rules and I created something by my art. Now, take your one-click shopping again. Linking databases via the internet all takes place within the rules set up by the originators of operating systems and internet protocols. What would this look like if the computers were eliminated. Well, it could be construed as someone looking through a catalog with one-phonecall shopping which links inventory and account legers and has automatic follow up phone calls to a shipping department and the customer. So, DONCHA SEE? This is nothing more than a mail order system with some book keeping, which has literally been around since cuneiform writing was developed by the ancient Sumerians. So, my $.03 is that if you can eliminate the computers and you still have a novel process which doesn't play by the rules, then you have a bona fide invention!