From Internet Patent News Service by Greg Aharonian, January 3, 2011
 
The 25 November edition of Nature has a brief book review of a new book, “Information and the nature of reality: from physics to metaphysics“, edited by Paul Davies (Cambridge University Press, 398 pages, $30). Let me bold and capitalize the first sentence of the review, to once again drum into the heads of the proudly-ignorant in the 35 USC 101 wars:
INFORMATION, RATHER THAN MASS AND ENERGY, IS COMING TO BE SEEN AS THE FUNDAMENTAL CURRENCY OF THE UNIVERSE.
or  Informacion, en lugar de masa y energia, esta llegando a ser visto como la moneda fundamental del universoLet me blunt – any judge or lawyer who argues that information isn’t physical in the context of patent law – SHOULD BE IMMEDIATELY DISBARRED.

I am tired of the scientifically-ignorant polluting patent caselaw, especially judges who seem to have forgotten much that they learned at MIT. Leave the logical contradictions and vagueness to copyright lawyers – let’s face it, there is nothing more utterly, hopelessly, fatally, nonsensically vague as 17 USC 102 a AND b – and for any open source lawyers reading this, there is actually a 17 USC 102b.

The rest of the book review:

Eminent scientists, philosophers and theologians come together in this anthology to chart this shift in thinking.  After describing the historical development of theories of quantum, biological and digital information, they contrast biological and physical approaches to information and examine the philosophical and ethical implications of the concept.

The patent world should be having such debates, WITH JUDGES IN THE AUDIENCE, not on the panels. Time for the judges to learn something about what they are guessing about in their opinions (which I blame on the AIPLA not taking this issue seriously).