Re: patenting colimits?

[Toby Bartels <toby+categories@ugcs.caltech.edu>]

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
>[...]

It is certainly to be deplored, but I'm not sure that it's anything new.

"A computer-implemented method and system for" performing calculations
is a common patent; there are even patents on straight-up algorithms.
The U.S. patent office is far too ignorant to judge whether the idea
"would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person
having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains"
(35 U.S.C. 103), which would make the invention unpatentable.

Certainly much of what is in the patent application is obvious,
but perhaps not all of it; were these diagrams of diagrams a new idea?,
or was applying them to computer system specifications a new idea?.
If so, it's too bad if they're published here instead of in a journal.
But actually, that doesn't seem to be what the patent is about;
it spends more time explaining how to calculate colimits of graphs
and repeating the rather obvious 3-option user menu.
There is an interesting theorem about extensions of diagrams;
I trust that it was published in one of the cited journal articles.

As (at least) one of the listed inventors is a reader of the list,
we might hear the other side; I'd be interested.


--Toby


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