From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/4887 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Vaughan Pratt Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: patenting colimits? Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 11:53:47 -0700 Message-ID: Reply-To: Vaughan Pratt NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1243294823 28098 80.91.229.12 (25 May 2009 23:40:23 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 23:40:23 +0000 (UTC) To: categories@mta.ca Original-X-From: categories@mta.ca Tue May 26 01:40:16 2009 Return-path: Envelope-to: gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from mailserv.mta.ca ([138.73.1.1]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1M8jmB-0006ce-Dz for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Tue, 26 May 2009 01:40:15 +0200 Original-Received: from Majordom by mailserv.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1M8jDe-0005Ws-Ep for categories-list@mta.ca; Mon, 25 May 2009 20:04:34 -0300 Original-Sender: categories@mta.ca Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:4887 Archived-At: On 5/25/2009 6:35 AM, Ronnie Brown wrote: > Larry Lambe passed on the following url to me for comment and I > thought it would be of interest to others on the category theory > list, with more expertise than I. I have not had time to study it, > but on the face of it, it seems like patenting mathematics, and to > be deplored intensely. Am I wrong? > > > http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6964037.html I skimmed the patent briefly just now, dated 2005. I was amused to see Dusko Pavlovic's name on it, I hadn't realized Dusko had become an inventor (congrats, Dusko). My first impression was that it's patenting the application of a category theory technique to the composition of hierarchically organized software specifications. It wasn't immediately clear to me which claims in the patent someone "skilled in the art" wouldn't have come up with right away given the problem(s) claimed to have been overcome. Since simply aggregating things is an obvious technique, the role of the morphisms in regulating the overlaps in the aggregation is obviously key. That of course is far too well known to be patentable itself. What I couldn't find on a first pass was what problem was overcome by what clever *and novel* trick. As with any patent, its viability will depend on how original the application is. Any prior art applying it in this way will render it vulnerable, but if the method is sufficiently novel it may serve its intended purpose of temporarily (namely until 2025) barring entry of others to whatever market turns out to have been created by this application, unless the would-be competitor can come up with a satisfactory alternative that does not infringe on this patent. (Imagine a jury wrestling with the question of whether amalgamation as used in logic and algebra infringes on a patent based on colimits.) Mathematicians who are philosophically opposed to seeing their ideas put to use in the business world should either stick to those parts of mathematics least likely to be of practical use or prepare for the shock of seeing their ideas used for the benefit of the non-mathematical public in ways that enrich primarily the "last-mile" people bringing those ideas to the public. In the first two decades of the internet, some academics took the attitude that no one should derive commercial benefit from the internet, and protested strenuously whenever anyone appeared to be trying to do so. That dam burst around 1995, and the purists were run over in the resulting stampede. There is no point trying to stand in the way of a similar stampede for commercial applications of category theory. Either colimits will turn out not to be a particularly effective way of assembling software specifications, in which case the patent will have been a waste of money, or they will turn out to be of use, in which case the purists will (hopefully) be run over as they were for the internet. More importantly from the perspective of mathematics, the latter outcome will motivate the funding agencies to take category theory more seriously and steer more support in its direction so it can grow faster and be even more useful. This would make category theory a secondary beneficiary behind the primary "last-mile" beneficiaries, giving it a more engineering flavour that brings it closer to the standing of academic electrical engineering and computer science, whose status is that of secondary beneficiaries of practical applications behind such primary beneficiaries as Oracle and HP. This connection with practicality has not impeded theoretical computer science, which has done quite well in the reflected glory of usefulness to the public at large. The biggest risk to which this patent subjects category theory is that if it fails to benefit its assignee, Kestrel, for want of interest in its methods, then that outcome might be used in arguments against raising the funding level for category theory research. Funding might then stay at the low level appropriate for truly pure mathematics, pure in Hardy's sense of having no practical application, just enough to support the most talented contributors to the subject while encouraging the rest to apply their enthusiasm for mathematics to areas of greater public benefit. Mathematicians wanting to prevent business people from applying mathematical results to practical problems via the usual protocols of the business world (e.g. patents) for fear it will somehow impede or impurify mathematics are like parents wanting to prevent doctors from disease-proofing their kids via the usual protocols of the medical world (e.g. vaccination) for fear it will somehow cause autism or turn their kids into needle-using junkies. The arguments that there are better protocols than patents or vaccination are not widely accepted today in the respective professional communities currently using them, though of course that sort of thing can change with the advent of new insights and better methods. Vaughan Pratt [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]