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> They ignored supreme court precedent in a series of rulings that made patenting abstract concepts possible Oh come on. Have you read that line of cases? They
by monochromatic 9y ago
> They ignored supreme court precedent in a series of rulings that made patenting abstract concepts possible
Oh come on. Have you read that line of cases? They're internally inconsistent and largely nonsensical. The fact that Alice was unanimous is pretty strong evidence that the Supreme Court doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about when it comes to patent law.
- jcranmer 9y agoI have read those cases. They're nowhere near as inconsistent as you believe them to be. Diamond v. Diehr was a ruling in the time-honored tradition of "let's overturn precedent while extolling how much we're not overturning precedent," but its actual text only pushed the boundaries a little, basically saying "having software doesn't make the thing unpatentable." It was the CAFC's State St. decision that turned everything to rubbish, basically saying that patentability was a creative writing exercise in showing that you could tie the patent to something concrete, no matter how tenuous that part is to the core patent. In Bilski, SCOTUS went well out of its way to trash State St. at every opportunity. Alice reiterated that decision by making it clear that the machine part can't be an incidental afterthought but must be rather fundamental to the process, reinforcing rather than overturning the ideas in Diamond v Diehr.
- monochromatic 9y agoPlease explain to me how "abstract idea" has anything to do with prior art? Because that's what the Alice analysis actually looks like.