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Court Ruling Opens The Door To Rejecting Many Software Patents

29 points by dean 15y ago

tzs 15y ago
Coverage from a better site: http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2011/08/if-the-software-method-is-not-patentable-then-neither-is-the-computer-readable-medium.html http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2011/08/if-the-software-meth...
brlewis 15y ago
Quote: the Supreme Court ruled very narrowly in the Bilski case, without making any explicit statement (as precedent) on overall software or business model patents I really don't get why so many people say this. The Court ruled narrowly on the particular question before them, but they were 9-0 on what software patent opponents care about. They all, majority and dissent, said not to use State Street as precedent. Further, the majority affirmed the Federal Circuit opinion that said to ignore their earlier State Street and Alappat opinions. We're back to Benson, Flook, and Diehr. Any patent where the novelty and non-obviousness is entirely contained in software should be invalid right now. Why is this not recognized?
- Daniel_Newby 15y ago
  Any patent where the novelty and non-obviousness is entirely contained in software should be invalid right now. Why is this not recognized? Because the decisions appear to be extremely incoherent. Firstly, software is a type of hardware. Any computer algorithm can be forged in steel and powered by a steam engine. Secondly, their definition of "abstract" does not pass the giggle test. If the claimed process is practical for a human to do, it is "abstract" and hence unpatentable. So we get the ludicrous argument that the math of BCD calculations is "abstract" while GPS signal analysis equations are concrete. Say what?! Thirdly, even if we grant them the laughable practicality test, how is fraud-screening millions of transactions a day practical for a human? Basically, the practicality standard seems to be if it makes the judge's eyes glaze over, it's impractical. In other words, if you can spoon-feed the invention to the judge and he gets it, then the innovation is purely cognitive. And unpatentable. But if he chokes on the ideas, the innovation is a patentable deus ex machina. This absurdity is underlined by the Research Corp. Techs. v. Microsoft Corp. case discussed in the ruling. The invention relies on extremely abstract processing of the dithering signal in the frequency domain. Judges do not understand the Fourier transform--hell, they aren't even aware of its existence--so the invention is patentable.

29 points by dean 15y ago

tzs 15y ago

Coverage from a better site: http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2011/08/if-the-software-method-is-not-patentable-then-neither-is-the-computer-readable-medium.html http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2011/08/if-the-software-meth...

brlewis 15y ago

Quote: the Supreme Court ruled very narrowly in the Bilski case, without making any explicit statement (as precedent) on overall software or business model patents I really don't get why so many people say this. The Court ruled narrowly on the particular question before them, but they were 9-0 on what software patent opponents care about. They all, majority and dissent, said not to use State Street as precedent. Further, the majority affirmed the Federal Circuit opinion that said to ignore their earlier State Street and Alappat opinions. We're back to Benson, Flook, and Diehr. Any patent where the novelty and non-obviousness is entirely contained in software should be invalid right now. Why is this not recognized?

Daniel_Newby 15y ago
Any patent where the novelty and non-obviousness is entirely contained in software should be invalid right now. Why is this not recognized? Because the decisions appear to be extremely incoherent. Firstly, software is a type of hardware. Any computer algorithm can be forged in steel and powered by a steam engine. Secondly, their definition of "abstract" does not pass the giggle test. If the claimed process is practical for a human to do, it is "abstract" and hence unpatentable. So we get the ludicrous argument that the math of BCD calculations is "abstract" while GPS signal analysis equations are concrete. Say what?! Thirdly, even if we grant them the laughable practicality test, how is fraud-screening millions of transactions a day practical for a human? Basically, the practicality standard seems to be if it makes the judge's eyes glaze over, it's impractical. In other words, if you can spoon-feed the invention to the judge and he gets it, then the innovation is purely cognitive. And unpatentable. But if he chokes on the ideas, the innovation is a patentable deus ex machina. This absurdity is underlined by the Research Corp. Techs. v. Microsoft Corp. case discussed in the ruling. The invention relies on extremely abstract processing of the dithering signal in the frequency domain. Judges do not understand the Fourier transform--hell, they aren't even aware of its existence--so the invention is patentable.