week 3

A Supreme Court case was submitted on the 21st that will decide whether or not binary code can be patented. A statute stated that code must be "married to a computer" and that there needs to be a device because you cannot patent an idea or principle. Also, the act of supplying embraces the act of copying; therefore, if a company wants to send a patented product abroad, they must also send copies of the machines used to make it so it can be mass produced in this new country. Now the court must decide if the code AT&T is using can be patented.

I think that code should not be able to be patented because it is not the code, but what the code makes that is important. The result of the code can be patented. This is similar to a book. The book is the final product of putting together many words. The book can be patented, but the words in the book cannot. Since the book is copyrighted, chapters and sentences are protected, too (which is how plagiarism is possible). The machine or device is the final product of putting together code. It can be patented, but the code that it is made up of cannot. The pieces of code that make up the website are protected just as the chapters and sentences that make up the book are as it is illegal to steal code from a website. Since the pieces that make up the book and the machine or device are already protected by this copyright, it is unnecessary to patent the smaller pieces individually as well.