Abstraction in Software Patents (and How to Fix it), 18 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 364 (2019)

Software has long posed a quandary for patent law. As many have observed, software is an abstract technology—but abstract ideas are supposedly ineligible for patenting. This Article explores just what that means, what it doesn’t mean, and what might fix the problem of abstraction in software patents. This Article offers two related ways to understand the abstract nature of software. First, computer science defines itself as a “science of abstraction,” and that self-definition finds real doctrinal purchase. Second, software code is designed to be what the doctrine calls “functional”—to describe abstract results that can be executed on heterogenous hardware without regard to how the results are achieved. Because software is functional, claims to software must necessarily also be functional. But functional claiming is exactly what the doctrine forbids. This Article also examines and refute a third reason some have offered: the idea that software algorithms are “just math.” Algorithms involve math and can be described by math, but they are not themselves math. In fact, this Article proposes that the way to fix software patents is to require patentees to claim algorithms—concrete algorithms, written in pseudocode, just as they would communicate their invention to other programmers

PaREM: A Novel Approach for Parallel Regular Expression Matching

Regular expression matching is essential for many applications, such as finding patterns in text, exploring substrings in large DNA sequences, or lexical analysis. However, sequential regular expression matching may be time-prohibitive for large problem sizes. In this paper, we describe a novel algorithm for parallel regular expression matching via deterministic finite automata. Furthermore, we present our tool PaREM that accepts regular expressions and finite automata as input and automatically generates the corresponding code for our algorithm that is amenable for parallel execution on shared-memory systems. We evaluate our parallel algorithm empirically by comparing it with a commonly used algorithm for sequential regular expression matching. Experiments on a dual-socket shared-memory system with 24 physical cores show speed-ups of up to 21x for 48 threads.Comment: CSE-2014, Dec. 19th - 21st, 2014, Chengdu, Sichuan, Chin

The Undecidable Charge Gap and the Oil Drop Experiment

Decision problems in physics have been an active field of research for quite a few decades resulting in some interesting findings in recent years. However, such research investigations are based on a priori knowledge of theoretical computer science and the technical jargon of set theory. Here, I discuss a particular, but a significant, instance of how decision problems in physics can be realized without such specific prerequisites. I expose a hitherto unnoticed contradiction, that can be posed as a decision problem, concerning the oil drop experiment and thereby resolve it by refining the notion of ``existence'' in physics. This consequently leads to the undecidability of the charge spectral gap through the notion of ``undecidable charges" which is in tandem with the completeness condition of a theory as was stated by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen in their seminal work. Decision problems can now be realized in connection to basic physics, in general, rather than quantum physics, in particular, as per some recent claims.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figur

THeM: una herramienta didáctica para modelos de Herbrand

La herramienta ‘THeM’ fue creada como trabajo de final de dos materias de segundo año de una carrera de Informática. Esta permite, dado un conjunto de cláusulas de la Lógica de Predicados de Primer Orden, determinar la existencia de Modelos de Herbrand para las mismas (lo cual permite conocer su satisfacibilidad). La herramienta provee una interfaz sencilla de utilizar y de entender, ya que uno de los objetivos es que sea usada por futuros alumnos de materias que estudien el tema.Trabajos de cátedra.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativa (SADIO

THeM: una herramienta didáctica para modelos de Herbrand

La herramienta ‘THeM’ fue creada como trabajo de final de dos materias de segundo año de una carrera de Informática. Esta permite, dado un conjunto de cláusulas de la Lógica de Predicados de Primer Orden, determinar la existencia de Modelos de Herbrand para las mismas (lo cual permite conocer su satisfacibilidad). La herramienta provee una interfaz sencilla de utilizar y de entender, ya que uno de los objetivos es que sea usada por futuros alumnos de materias que estudien el tema.Trabajos de cátedra.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativa (SADIO

THeM: una herramienta didáctica para modelos de Herbrand

La herramienta ‘THeM’ fue creada como trabajo de final de dos materias de segundo año de una carrera de Informática. Esta permite, dado un conjunto de cláusulas de la Lógica de Predicados de Primer Orden, determinar la existencia de Modelos de Herbrand para las mismas (lo cual permite conocer su satisfacibilidad). La herramienta provee una interfaz sencilla de utilizar y de entender, ya que uno de los objetivos es que sea usada por futuros alumnos de materias que estudien el tema.Trabajos de cátedra.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativa (SADIO