### Comment:
And technology in general, programming especially, blurs the line between idea and implementation. Algorithms can be novel, but do they merit patent or copyright protection (or neither — maybe just trade secret protection? Does the answer vary depending on type or complexity of algorithm, or whether it is implemented mechanically or in software?  
  
 I don’t know if there is any good one size fits all answer.

### REPLY:
The one size answer is code should be protected by copyright, which they are. You can't just copy the entire thing. 
  
 But code shouldn't be patentable - it's an algorithm, which at it's core can be reduced to math - and math is fundamentally **not** patentable.

### END.