Does a Mobile App Patent Protect the Code, or the Way the App Looks and Functions?

00:05

Regarding software apps, are you protecting the actual code which is behind the app or the way the app appears? And functions?

00:12
Yeah, perfect. Question. And it's a it's a review question of sorts. That's why they call me the patent professor because it's sometimes it feels like I'm holding class. Class we're going to review today. When Giovanni wanted to protect his, his home fries method of creating home fries, did he care about the specific steps in the written recipe? Or does he want to protect the fries themselves and make sure nobody else sells something like this same thing with an app, like, who cares what's inside the software code by code, protecting your your app, because a competitor, if they're smart, they're not going to just do your code, they're not going to take it line for line, they're gonna hire a computer programmer to take the meat of your invention, the heart of your invention, steal that and put it in their own words, in code, so to speak, which is for software programmer, the code is their their language, or put it in their language, and then they're not gonna they're gonna avoid infringement. So the quick answer to that question is you don't want to protect the code. In fact, a lot of people don't realize even the Protect software, you don't have to have the software done. And I have inventors that price. They're like, Hey, I just have an idea for software. But I don't, I'm not a programmer, and I haven't had a programmer, your eye is want to protect. Because here's the other thing that when you're old, you realize that software would just change me when I was in studying to be an engineer. I was learning Fortran programming. I don't know if any of the developers or inventors on here even know what Fortran is. But that's how I learned programming basic and Fortran. There was no C++ there weren't these modern software programming languages. However, your software is good for 20 years. So you don't want to protect the code that's used today. Protect the code that's used in 20 years. You know what a cell phone looked like 20 years ago. I mean, I don't know if I have it here anymore. I'd have original Motorola a cell phone that came in like it was the size of a laptop. So that's that you want the you don't want the specific code or the language you want the idea protected.