>It would seem that others do not find it difficult to contemplate and
>actually patent this sort of "small stuff".
Yes of course, you can always find someone who will patent something
anytime. There was until recently for instance a UK patent on the
transmutation of elements i.e. by alchemy. But simply having a patent issued
does not necessarily mean that you are correct. Remember that all that a
patent does for you is to give you the right to sue. In most cases in
practice it is too costly to bother. So manufacturers usually rely on
holding a patent simply to frighten off others for fear of being sued.
Your example below
" A method for determining the parameters of a unit cell of a crystal
structure using diffraction is presented. The method includes the steps of
repeatedly rotating the crystal at a predetermined angle, while the crystal
moves in relation to a detection surface and measuring the position of
radiation reflected from the crystal. The resulting combined measurements
are utilized to accurately determine the unit cell dimension and orientation
of the crystal"
of a typical patent could be challenged by anyone skilled in the art (the
abstract description makes it sound like the Weissenberg technique, and one
has to read the actual patent to see that it is not by the way)and is
clearly one in which a manufacturer is trying to protect itself from its
competitors. No doubt a competitor could easily see this off if it wished to
spend the money. But for we lesser mortals writing software for ourselves
and our friends is there anything to fear? I doubt it. After all the patent
holder in this case (a well known x-ray company) is hardly going to want to
alienate its customer base i.e. us!
>What is to stop someone patenting the business method of pointing
>a cryostream at a crystal? Based on the US Patent Office - not much
>given they are willing to allow the patenting of the Business Method
>of swinging on a swing:
>US Patent 6,368,227 titled "Method of swinging on a swing"
There is nothing to stop them of course, but it would be unenforceable and
in any case up to the commercial company to deal with, not we practicing
crystallographers.
Then again the above patents are not strictly software patents but patents
on methods, so are not really the issue here. The dividing line between
methods and actual software is fuzzy.
The real question it seems to me is this. If I write a piece of software,
publish it in a journal and give it to my crystallography colleagues for
free, do I have anything to fear? In theory someone holding a relevant
patent could sue me for loss of potential earnings. If I had copied my
software from a company patent, say that of an x-ray diffraction company,
and by distributing it I was then willfully harming the sales of that
company then I DESERVE to be sued and take the consequences. On the other
hand most of the software we produce as working crysrtallographers is not in
this category, and if it were worthwhile software it is more likely that a
commercial company would want to pay us for the rights to the software
copyright.
So my conclusion is again, while I think software patenting is a silly idea,
I doubt if it would have any real effect on non commercial software writers
in crystallography. But then I have been proved wrong before!
Mike Glazer
Oxford
