I just learned from Case Western's law school that Peter Junger died at 73 last week. The Plain Dealer's obituary is here: http://cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1164360994108030.xml&coll=2 I first encountered Peter during his courageous First Amendment lawsuit against the federal government over the constitutionality of anti-encryption regulations. When I taught a class at Case Western a few years ago, Peter was kind enough to be a guest lecturer. When CyberPatrol made legal threats over software that decrypted the "secret" blacklist, Peter said on Politech that the software was "seriously useful" and "educational" and that the DMCA was a threat: http://www.politechbot.com/p-01015.html In addition to being a law professor (and, more recently, a professor of law emeritus), Peter was an active blogger, Buddhist, and system administrator. I recall Peter telling me he gave up his office (which he would be otherwise be entitled to) at the law school in exchange for being able to colocate his samsara.law.cwru.edu Red Hat Linux server at the law school instead. Up until his death Peter was working on an article with the typically blunt title of "You Can't Patent Software; Patenting Software is Wrong." A draft is here: http://samsara.law.cwru.edu/patart/index.html And an excerpt: "As I argue in this article at what most of you will consider excessive length, the Supreme Court was right in holding that computer programs are no more patentable than are mathematical inventions like the calculus or logical truths like De Morgan's law that ``NOT (A AND B)'' equals ``NOT A OR NOT B''. Computer programs are texts, not machines as some lawyers have confused themselves into believing, and thus they may be copyrighted and protected by the First Amendment, but they are not patentable as machines. Computer programs are indeed processes, but they are not patentable processes because what they process is information and what they produce is information, not some modification of material goods or articles of commerce. The simple fact is---though the reasons for it may be hard for most lawyers to grasp---that, as the title of this article puts it: ``You can't patent software: patenting software is wrong.''" I'm told the Cleveland Buddhist Temple is holding a memorial service for Peter on Saturday and that the law school is planning one soon. -Declan _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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