Re: Plagiary or politics?

[Robert Jasiek <jasiek@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Compgo123@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Mathematical algorithms can be patented.

Obviously, this is different for every nation. it may be possible in
the USA, it is impossible in Germany, e.g. In Germany programs,
i.e. applied algorithms woven together, are implicitly copyrighted;
once you create a program its creation ensures copyright.

Thus we have to ask what happens at the international level.

> For example, most of the encryption
> algorithms are patented, such as RC4 and IDEA.

In Germany such a patent would not apply, it would be part of
public domain science, AFAIK. However, there are international
conventions that allow some sort of ackowledgement of another
country's laws. I can only conclude that every court might come
to every conclusion. Some have suggested to use US patent laws
as a German to get better protection in Germany, but I have no
idea whether this is really useful in practice. E.g. Rubik failed
to get a German patent for his cube, so no patent applied in
Germany, even though he had one for Hungary.

In the USA interaction between research institutes and business
is very high. This might explain why algorithms could get
patents there. But what is patented? Clearly not the freedom
of research, rather some kind of commercial application of
research.

My comment: Laws are dozens, if not hundreds, of years behind science
evolution and application. The more international a problem is the
worse the situation is.

BTW, what about patenting an explicit representation of prime
numbers or a race's entire genetic code? ;-(

-- 
robert jasiek
Why is DNA so hard to decipher?
God included too many comments!