CCL: software pattents in chemistry?

 Sent to CCL by: "Ross Walker" [ross]_[rosswalker.co.uk]
 > For what it's worth, the same figure appears to be included in their
 > publication of similar name, and is entirely legible in that format:
 >
 >   J Chem Inf Comput Sci. 2003 Nov-Dec;43(6):1982-97.
 >
 > It appears they filed provisional patents, and then proceeded
 > to publish
 > the same material.
 And this is part of the problem with software patents I feel. If you are
 going to patent an algorithm you can't then expect to publish work that uses
 that algorithm in peer reviewed journals. The problem being that if you
 patent the algorithm you use other researchers can't use that algorithm to
 reproduce and verify your work and therefore such work does not belong in a
 peer reviewed journal.
 Copyrighted code is a very different situation, however, since even if you
 use a commercial implementation of an algorithm to do the research other
 scientists can simply implement the algorithm described in your paper to
 reproduce the results. If the algorithm itself is patented then nobody can
 verify your results without paying you royalties.
 Thus perhaps the discussion should be whether publication of an algorithm,
 by the authors of a patent, in scientific journals then invalidates the
 scope of that patent.
 Just my 2c.
 All the best
 Ross
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