Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Protecting new ideas and methods is what *patents* are for.
Copyright is for protecting specific expressions of those ideas or methods.
A truly new and superior algorithm for digitally encoding audio would be patentable, not copyrightable. The software implementing that algorithm and the files they produced would be copyrightable.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
It may or may not be patentable, depending on the jurisdiction. "Pure" software patents are almost never granted by the UK Patent Office, for example. In order to be patentable in the UK, a computer program has to be part of a solution to a "technical problem". A data compression algorithm used as part of a more efficient system for transmitting audio from one place to another probably would be patentable, for example, but the algorithm in isolation wouldn't be.
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See how the things depend on the jurisdiction?
In 1980 IIRC the Supreme Court of the US granted that any product of the human mind may be patentable - thus abstract algorithms.
The UK provision is an adaptation to the local law of the EPC provisions - that an algorithm per se is a business method, id est something that can work only inside the brain, thus lacking any technical effect a patent is supposed to have, thus not patentable.
But since the algorithms are usually implemented "inside" a computer (or controller) and they have a technical effect (eg you press the button P+, the controller inside the remote controller runs an algorithm and interprets it as PROG +, sends the code via IR to the TV set, and this changes the channel = technical effect) this is no restriction. Pure algorithms are rare, and practically nobody spends money and research on them - everyone wants something tangible (the church/religion is a notable exception
the technical effect of the afterlife was not yet proven
).