Patentable Tunings

Hey Joseph and all,

OK - so I decided to accept your challenge and
dug up the following. We're both right.

[BEGIN EXCERPT]
In order to be patentable, an invention must pass four
tests:

1. The invention must fall into one of the five
"statutory classes" of things that are patentable:

1. processes,

2. machines,

3. manufactures (that is, objects made by humans
or machines),

4. compositions of matter, and

5. new uses of any of the above.

2. The invention must be "useful". One aspect of the
"utility" test is that the invention cannot be a mere
theoretical phenomenon.

3. The invention must be "novel", that is, it must be
something that no one did before.

4. The invention must be "unobvious" to "a person having
ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter
pertains". This requirement is the one on which many
patentability disputes hinge.

[END EXCERPT]
(Source: html://www.patents.com/patents.htm)

Anyway, a piano tuning would be statuatory class #1,
"processes". Thus it has been possible in the past to
patent procedures for tuning a piano (and in the past, the
procedure is pretty much what defined the tuning).

And if your new method of tuning relies on a claim of part
of a method of some other patented tuning, you could find
yourself having to license use of that claim or come up
with a different method.

Yes, the extremely difficult, clever, and completely
non-obvious *method* for tuning a piano to 12tET was
*completely* patentable. But it's been around long enough
that it is no longer novel.

Fortunately for all of us, tunings in the form of a
description of ratios or as cents values are not
patentable, though a *procedure* for achieving them on a
given instrument is.

I don't think that anyone bothered to patent the method
of tuning instruments by MIDI sysex messages, so we should
be safe there since that is no longer novel.

Also, I and others have been retuning instruments through
MIDI pitch bends for many years (myself since 1987). This
method is *definately* 100% patentable but thank God it is
no longer novel otherwise we'd have one heck of a dog
fight on our hands!

Also things like the MOS method of coming up with ratio
sets and the idea of extracting tunings from spectra using
FFT are probably all patentable.

Oh, and by the way the WTO treaty extended patents
from 17 to 20 years.

And as advice to all of us, you MUST keep a lab book
made out of physical paper where you write down your
inventions and initial and date every one of them. This
will be your best way to defend yourself in the event that
a big corporation tries to steal your invention by
patenting it themselves. (From personal experience, I can
testify that this is what companies do -- steal things
from hapless inventors who just want to make the world a
better place.)

- Jeff