Question regarding "morality" and copyright fee

[MasahikoKimura]

Hello,
I had this cool idea for a sotware and wanted to patent all the processes involved in the making of the software (that is, how I retrieve the data, the series of steps to obtain the result, etc). Since I'm Japanese, can I patent it in the USA? And if so (that should be possible) where should I refer to in order to accomplish this? Let's now head straight to the second question. That's a question regarding "morality" in payments. I owe a lot to freeware, opensource, etc, so I was thinking that as long as one doesn't EARN money in either direct or indirect way (by indirect I mean, f.e. including it in a CD to sell, but NOT pay if put in an ISO that can be downloaded freely on the net), should not pay any "copyright" fee, while if someone does a clone to earn money he _should_ pay a copyright fee.

Do you agree?
Or am I missing any points?

Thanks in anticipation.
Masahiko Kimura

[AFFA]

I wish to inform you that although you are from Japan, yet you may file a patent with USPTO. You may file the patent through an attorney or you may file the patent yourself as the inventor. Ideally, you should seek the permission of the other party which has the copyright to use a copyright work. However, in certain limited conditions under the fair use doctrine a copyright work may be replicated. Such exceptions include non commercial use of the copyright work.

AFF

[MasahikoKimura]

Hello there..Thanks for such a great advice.