Posts Tagged: "computer"

What If you created an automobile engine that could deliver 500 miles per gallon of gasoline would you seek a patent? I suspect you would because that type of engine would almost certainly be revolutionary. So why wouldn’t you think about patenting a software system that more efficiently manages power consumption for a large office building? If you could reduce energy consumption by 25% wouldn’t that be noteworthy? Of course, and it should be patentable as well. Legally it doesn’t matter whether the advantage is created by an old world mechanical gadget or thanks to the constant monitoring and manipulation of parameters via a computer following instructions. Both are innovations and both are patentable, and rightly so.

The Federal Trade Commission approved a settlement with Intel Corp. that resolves charges the company illegally stifled competition in the market for computer chips. Intel has agreed to provisions that will open the door to renewed competition and prevent Intel from suppressing competition in the future. Under this agreement Intel must modify its intellectual property agreements with AMD, Nvidia, and Via so that those companies have more freedom to consider mergers or joint ventures with other companies, without the threat of being sued by Intel for patent infringement.

Amazon Technologies, Inc., received US Patent No. 7,610,382, which relates to a computer implemented method of marking copies of content distributed on a network. More specifically, the patent discloses and claims a variety of embodiments of a method and associated apparatus for programmatically substituting synonyms into text content distributed through a Web service.

The code itself and how it is written is protected via copyright, if at all, not through a patent. So when you are trying to define the invention so that it can be described adequately in a patent application you do not need to detail every language that could be used, and you do not need to provide an outline of the routines or subroutines, but what you do need to provide is enough information so that the computer programmer could translate your description into code, so you want to provide enough to allow the computer programmer to create the outline themselves, understanding that the actual approach employed by the computer programmer will be as unique as they are.