After reading the post, I had the same thoughts as you, so I decided to do a cursory review of the _Alice_ case history. The question was whether three patents

After reading the post, I had the same thoughts as you, so I decided to do a cursory review of the _Alice_ case history. The question was whether three patents describing a software system that merely automated a preexisting process using generic hardware was patentable. In the decision, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision affirming the court of appeals judgment that the subject matter was not patentable, which itself affirmed the district court judgment (with a caveat I'll get to below). That itself stood out to me as odd, since most cases reaching the Supreme Court involve some sort of difficult question of law, some inconsistency in application of the law between different appeals courts or justiciable constitutional questions. Based on the case history, that wasn't clear. Furthermore, the court of appeals was (as in all patent cases) the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, widely understood to be "captured" by and a tool of the "patent bar." The judges are typically former patent attorneys, and most notably, the Supreme Court often overturns Federal Circuit judgments unanimously. I don't follow this stuff religiously, but I'm not sure I've ever seen the Federal Circuit unanimously affirmed. I decided to dig in more. The case history was a bit more interesting, and crystallized why this thing went up the chain. The case history actually did involve a small amount of disagreement. Initially, a panel of Federal Circuit judges sided with the petitioner _Alice_, who sought to have the parents reinstated. However, the Federal Circuit subsequently performed _en banc_ review where the entire court (save those judges recusing themselves or otherwise absent) sat to hear the case. The outcome of that _en banc_ review was a seven-judge majority (out of ten) throwing out two of the three claimed patents. In addition, a plurality but not a majority of five judges wanted to throw out all of the patent claims. In the world of legal appeals, tie votes affirm the decision of the lower court, but such decisions are not considered persuasive or "controlling." Indeed, the opinion of the seven judge _en banc_ majority was a single paragraph. It's hard for anyone to figure out exactly what a plurality opinion means without resorting to reading tea leaves or other forms of divination. Into this ambiguity stepped the Supreme Court in order to provide clarity to both the appeals court and the rest of the judiciary. The only controversial aspect of this case was whether only two patents were bad or whether they all were. To summarize, every court involved in the case concluded that the three claimed patents covered non-patentable subject matter. The court of appeals explicitly established to serve the interests of patent litigators affirmed this, and the Supreme Court only reviewed the case in order to more definitively demonstrate that the subject matter was not patentable (and it did this in the strongest possible way). All of this leads me to strongly concur with your reading of this EFF post. The _Alice_ case involved a particularly egregious case of nonsense patents/patent trolling, such that not even the Federal Circuit would save it. Far from being some sort of landmark case, the Supreme Court's opinion mostly relies on existing precedent and serves to further clarify the disposition of the US courts toward patentability of abstract ideas. And most bizarrely, USPTO was not a party in this case. While the patent office does need to follow the law including the judgements of US federal courts, they were not bound by _Alice_ and so more or less can ignore it. When I consider the actual facts, I think the EFF is sensationalizing this particular case and heavy-handedly hyping it with provocative framing in order to spread propaganda. I even agree with the EFF nine times out of ten on issues of so-called intellectual property, but they undercut their argument when they push junk like this. This is a far cry from the days when the EFF was defending victims of the MPAA and RIAA or fighting to stop internet censorship or even campaigning against the DMCA and it's subsequent abuses. In short, I affirm your judgment.