Z:gnu-www-ja-danger-of-software-patents--e5a735-You see, in physical engineeri/en

You see, in physical engineering fields, they can use the physical nature of what's going on to narrow things down. For instance, in chemical engineering, they can say, &ldquo;What are the substances going in? What are the substances coming out?&rdquo; If two different [patent] applications are different in that way, then they're not the same process so you don't need to worry. But the same math can be represented in ways that can look very different, and until you study them both together, you don't realize they're talking about the same thing. And, because of this, it's quite common to see the same thing get patented multiple times [in software].