[axman6]

Ha, that was indeed a typo, and I think it's too late to correct it now.

It seems from your tone that you believe that a company who is intereste din patenting any ideas their engineers come up with is somehow evil, but it's just an effort to protect any competitive advantage they have.

Sure there's nothing stopping companies releasing their trade secrets, but the patent system gives them the incentive to, for the benefit of themselves and others. They're primarilly about ensuring developments in the usful arts are made available for all for the greater benefit of society. Too many people forget this fact.

I'm glad at least one person can see that most patents are not just a matter of being mere algorithms; they're specific processes which have some kind of useful result. Arithmetic coding by itself is a mere algorithm, but its use to compress data in an optimal way is patentable because it provides a useful useful result. There are countless other examples, but they are too often misreported because of a lack of knowledge of the patent system or even how to read a patent correctly when it comes to the legal metters involved.

[shasta]

> a company who is interested in patenting any ideas their engineers come up with is somehow evil

No, not at all. I'm blaming the patent system, not the company. I see the potential benefits of patents as:

1. Research is pursued because of an economic incentive that would not exist if it were not patentable.

2. Research is disclosed that would not be disclosed were it not protected by patent.

You seem to think 2 is more the point of patents than 1, but I don't think that's either historically accurate (both were reasons as of the writing of the constitution) or that it's playing out in practice today.

The cost of patents is obstructing / taxing innovators, particularly when they didn't benefit from the patent they're infringing. With the dials set where they are right now, I think the cost of software patents greatly exceeds their benefits.