| On the contrary, patents are exactly what are intended to cover methods of operation. A lot of court decisions regarding copyrightability explicitly mention this. Note, patents usually don't cover the formalized description itself (mainly because it would result in an overly narrow patent) but rather what you can use software to do. Here's a claim from the infamous one-click patent: 1. A method of placing an order for an item comprising:
under control of a client system, displaying information identifying the item; and
in response to only a single action being performed, sending a request to order the item along with an identifier of a purchaser of the item to a server system; under control of a single-action ordering component of the server system, receiving the request; retrieving additional information previously stored for the purchaser identified by the identifier in the received request; and generating an order to purchase the requested item for the purchaser identified by the identifier in the received request using the retrieved additional information; and
fulfilling the generated order to complete purchase of the item whereby the item is ordered without using a shopping cart ordering model. It's a description alright, but there's nothing mathematical or formalized about it (though a software implementation would be a lot of code - formalized description - that applies a bunch of mathematics). |
The goodness of patents depends on them being inobvious, and the receipient of the patent actually disclosing something useful. Otherwise, once again, the government is just granting a state-enforced monopoly on something, rather arbitrarily.
The problems with "IP" don't rest merely with distinguishing "idea" from "instantiation" (or whatever the legal term is), but rather derive from a much deeper level of problem and paradox.