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Comment by Detrus | Hacker News Reader

These sound like silly distinctions. I'm sure lawyers have good rhetoric to back themselves up but maintaining the pace of innovation should be prioritized above their greatest arguments. If there was an opportunity to redesign the patent system, some sort of economic framework should be used instead of the legal one.

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Well there is a fundamental difference between the two. The light bulb was invented, was lightning was discovered. It already existed, and was merely discovered. It was discovered that there are are infinite primes. It was discovered that f'(x) = 2x when f(x) = x^2. It was discovered that when p is prime, (a * x) === b mod p, x is unique mod p (unless a=0, or something else). Eventually you get to things like cryptography where you can apply some simple things that were discovered into a process, and come up with encryption.

If you go back to mathematics and consider (Newton's method)[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtons_method], that seems like it might have been invented, but it's derived from a series of discoveries, and hence is considered a discovery rather than an invention. If you used the Newton-Rhapson method to calculate the zero of a function in code somewhere, you should feel safe that it's not protected by a patent (not to mention it was discovered ages ago).

Since computer science is applied mathematics, and mathematics are discovered rather than invented, it makes sense that it should be protected as well. I'm not the best at explaining things, but hopefully you can understand the difference.

The light bulb was invented? How do you know Edison didn't just dig the first one out of the ground and tell everyone he invented it? Before Edison discovered the first light bulb, would it have been impossible to build one? Were the materials simply non-existent?

It's all discovery.

It was discovered that light has some weak magnetic properties, then an actual experiment was done that discovered these magnetic properties were strong enough to generate useful amounts of electricity. Patents were issued.

This is just semantic wordplay. I bet the legal literature is the same way. Even if we somehow fit these clunky classifications to reality, we would be no closer to designing a sensible patent system.

Were the patents issued for using that form of electricity, or rather for the contraption built to harness that electricity?

Don't know. They haven't built a practical contraption yet, hopefully it's some piece of their experimental setup, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's math. After all, they do issue patents for what some describe as "8th grade algebra" in software.

Don't worry, I understand the semantic distinction when the case is clear cut. Lead is a discovery, lead pipes are an invention. Addition is a discovery, arabic numerals are an invention. (by today's standards)

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