Newsgroups: comp.speech
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From: lseltzer@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (L. Seltzer)
Subject: Re: PASC and MUSICAM
Message-ID: <1993Jul16.165532.22354@Princeton.EDU>
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Date: Fri, 16 Jul 1993 16:55:32 GMT
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My understanding is that it is the IMPLEMENTATION of an idea that is
patentable, not the idea.  You can't patent a mathematical algorithm.
You can patent a piece of firmware on a DSP chip.  At the same time,
companies do have the right to consider information as proprietary,
so that even if an algorithm is known inside a company, the company
does not have to tell all of it to the outside world.  Clearly, the
relationship of this to publishing in journals is complex, since
supposedly journals are for sharing knowledge, but sometimes the juicy
details are missing from articles.  Actually, the speech community is
quite good about sharing information.  I don't think that anyone from
the net should expect to be able to get every algorithm from every
company if the companies are making their living from knowing it.

