source file: mills2.txt Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 01:07:03 -0800 Subject: Copyrighted/patented scales From: Daniel Wolf <106232.3266@compuserve.com> Pat Missin's example of harmonica tunings shows exactly where the distinction between what is patentable and what is not might reasonably be. An arrangement of _notes_ on the instrument is patentable for keyboard instruments and for instruments where individual _notes_ are produced by individual keys, switches, or blowholes (as in the harmonica). These layouts or arrangements are clearly invented, much like a mapmaking technique is invented and protectable as an invention. On the other hand, the tuning itself (i.e. what frequencies are assigned to particular notes) is ''common cultural property'' and not patentable. (To repeat my mapmaking analogy, the tuning is analogous to the territory being mapped, and a territory is not patentable, the recent - and deeply mistaken - awards of patents on genes to the contrary). An example: if I decide that the best possible arrangement of harmonica reeds in a diatonic harmonica is .... and no one has thought it up and sought protection before me, then I may patent the _arrangement_ of reeds. If however, I wish also to define the tuning of the reeds as, for example, seven pitches out of 31TET, this _tuning_ will not be patentable. Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Wed, 18 Dec 1996 12:26 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA01358; Wed, 18 Dec 1996 12:28:58 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA01356 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id DAA05974; Wed, 18 Dec 1996 03:28:55 -0800 Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 03:28:55 -0800 Message-Id: <199612180625_MC1-D44-8970@compuserve.com> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu