electronic document signing as a concept is covered by many software patents
if you started your own product doing it you would get sued by DocuSign and friends, and they have lots of money for lawyers
so quite hard to disrupt their monopoly
if you started your own product doing it you would get sued by DocuSign and friends, and they have lots of money for lawyers
so quite hard to disrupt their monopoly
Using math does not disqualify someone from obtaining a patent.
It's just series of steps, a recipe. You do "A", then "B", then "C" as outlined in a patent then you violate a patent and the person has the right to sue you. Whether the steps are outlined involve math or not isn't really relevant.
What is covered and not covered by a patent is very arbitrary and based on court precedent. Any sort of sanctions against "pure math functions" are usually easily worked around by including "as done in a computer" or similar language.
Patents are a very good way for governments to retard progress while rewarding large companies for investing in large numbers of lawyers.