Huh? Maybe you are thinking of copyright?
A software patent is not on actual code. For example, the Unisys patent on the LZW compression algorthim (which has expired) described the algorithm and provided code in Fortran. But if you rewrote it in C, you would still have had to license it from Unisys because it was the algorthim that was patented, not the bits.
because it was the algorthim that was patented, not the bits.
~~~~~~~~~~~
IS this true? I can’t beleive they would issue a patent for an algorithm. That’s like copywrighting the table of contents of a book, but not the chapters or the text. It defies logic. Doesn’t it?