Re: Is b-tree index patented?

"Mikito Harakiri" <mikharakiri_at_iahu.com> wrote in message news:<k6dlb.10$5H6.170_at_news.oracle.com>...
> "Alfredo Novoa" <alfredo_at_ncs.es> wrote in message
> news:e4330f45.0310210351.343fabbe_at_posting.google.com...
> > > Why new
> > > algorithm is not an invention?
> >
> > Because algorithms are mathematics and mathematics has nothing
> > inventive in itself.
>
> I beg your pardon, but you sound much like Nobel. Why such discrimination?

Because inventions are devices or concrete methods and processes, not abstract ideas.

Patents were created for devices and industrial processes, not for logic. Most of the original reasons for the patent creation don't apply to algorithms.

For instance industrial research is extremely expensive, and without patents it would be very difficult to do research in the industry. Patents are intended to benefit the whole society.

However, I have not seen a dramatic increase in the research after algorithm patents were stablished (only in US and Japan), but all the negative effects of patents still apply.

In this case the cost for the society is higher than the benefit.

> How about cryptography? Nice application of math to practical problems. US
> Patent 3,962,539 describes the Data Encryption Standard (DES).

I don't know a lot about DES, it has a bad reputation, but in the case of RSA, the patent was an important dead weight which slowed down the use of public key cryptography for many years.

> > Imagine that Codd had patented the application of logic to the data
> > management field. It would be ridiculous IMO.
>
> I see nothing wrong with it. It would be inventor who get's rewarded.

There are other ways for geting rewarded.

> How
> Codd is different from Alexander Graham Bell?

Bell didn't patented the idea of distant voice communication, he patented a concrete implementation method and a device.

BTW, Bell was not the first person to invent the telephone.

Regards
  Alfredo Received on Wed Oct 22 2003 - 11:49:56 CEST