> Here's another way to think about this: imagine you invented the lever. The thing that allows you to move heavy objects you could not before, is the prior art of a log and a rock. The beam-and-fulcrum arrangement "only" tells the rock and log what to do.
I found a small rock and a stick and I told them to move a big rock but nothing happened. I think you need to do something more than communicate information to them to get them to produce leverage.
That's the fundamental difference with software. A computer takes an algorithm and an input and produces an output. For example, you might take an image decompression algorithm and a compressed image and produce raw pixel values. The important fact is that the algorithm and the compressed image and the uncompressed image are all purely information. It's the difference between knowing something and doing something. Computers cause information to be created, but information is not supposed to be patentable, and there is nothing else there to patent other than information.
> Non sequitur. Anything can be abstracted to an arbitrary degree. A very specific type of a screw with a very exact shape made of a very specific alloy can be abstractly defined as a "fastening component." That does not mean nothing is patentable.
No, but what it means is that if you're going to say "fastening component" instead of providing anything more specific, that should not be the only part of your claim directed to patentable subject matter.
> My point was precisely that the "abstract" that the court has in mind is very different from the "abstract" that we have in mind when talking about algorithms.
Even if that were true I'm not sure what it's supposed to prove. Algorithms are all different kinds of abstract. And as soon as you make them specific you're straight into mathematical formulas and laws of nature.