Granted. But surely the prior art on bits being transmitted through a general purpose computing machine, whether mechanical, magnetic, mental, musical, or magical, is now unassailable. What is novel is not physical, what is physical is not novel.
So every software implementation of anything is not novel? Are you really sure about that?
I am wrapping up a tremendously complex and awesome patent application today that my client is essentially implementing in hardware, but there is absolutely software involved, and I also drafted the claims so that a bunch of stuff my client happens to be implementing in custom ASICs is also covered if the same magic were also done by a general purpose computer running the same functionality in software. It's not a distinction almost anyone will ever be able to tell the difference with (except the custom silicon is going to function faster than a software-on-general-purpose-computer could do). Are you sure that difference would automatically make it not novel and undeserving of a patent?
I believe there is no meaningful distinction between an algorithm running on general purpose hardware and the same algorithm running on custom hardware. If you'd enforce your patent by claiming that someone else was barred from implementing an algorithm you own, I'd say that "what is novel is not physical". Algorithms are not within the purview of the patent office (or I should say, should not be).
If you'd enforce your patent by saying that someone else was barred from inventing your custom hardware to run this fast algorithm, I guess I'd want to know if the leap from the algorithm to the specific ASIC is "obvious to one skilled in the art".
