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Business Method Patents Limited by U.S. Supreme Court
- jbooth 16y agoThank you, Microsoft and Google.
- tzs 16y agoIBM's amicus brief was interesting. The said "This judicial direction has resulted in substantial economic, technological, and societal benefit because software patents promote innovation both within and beyond the field of software" and had a footnote to elaborate on that point. The footnote said: "Without the benefit of patent protection, software companies would be forced to rely on secrecy which limits the public’s ability to learn from software innovations, since patent documents are a significant source of technological disclosure. See, e.g., In re Alappat, 33 F.3d 1526, 1571 (Fed. Cir. 1994) (Newman, J., concurring). Given the reality that software source code is human readable, and object code can be reverse engineered, it is difficult for software developers to resort to secrecy. Thus, without patent protection, the incentives to innovate in the field of software are significantly reduced. Patent protection has promoted the free sharing of source code on a patentee’s terms—which has fueled the explosive growth of open source software development." Another interesting brief was the one from the FSF. They spent 13 pages on their "Interest of Amicus Curiae" section (where the submitter explains why they have an interest in the case). That's something like 40% of their brief. In this 13 pages, they talk about how Linux should be called GNU/Linux, the 1992 US Air Force contract with NYU to produce a GPLed ADA compiler, how RMS is a genius, and much more. It reads like a press release. For comparison, most of the rest manage to state their interest in a page or two, and then get on to their argument.