11 ms·

Supreme Court rules on software patent case Alice Corp v. CLS Bank [pdf]

238 points by sthu11182 12y ago

sthu11182 12y ago
A little more clarity on abstract ideas, but not much more
helper 12y ago
The Court has begun to limit the scope of software patents, but has not eliminated them. This ruling is a step in the right direction and the unanimity of the Court should be taken as a positive sign for future cases.
spacemanmatt 12y ago
Today I mourn the end of Groklaw, where I would have gone to get the very finest in public discourse and debate about the ruling.
- angersock 12y ago
  Yep. Damn shame. :(
  - ascotan 12y ago
    I didn't know they went down. Terrible.
    - SAI_Peregrinus 12y ago
      With the Snowden releases PJ realized she couldn't protect the anonymity of her sources, so she shut down to keep them safe.
cbr 12y ago
"Held: Because the claims are drawn to a patent-ineligible abstract idea, they are not patent eligible"
- wging 12y ago
  (Decided unanimously.)
  - mcdan 12y ago
    a concurrent not dissenting opinion was filed so it wasn't a 5-4 split or something, the other justices came to the same conclusion just via a different route.
    - sanxiyn 12y ago
      (Very short) concurring opinion is there because those judges believe all business method patents should be abolished, just as they believed so in Bilski v. Kappos.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
revscat 12y ago
From p. 15 of the decision: "The method claims do not, for example, purport to improve the functioning of the computer itself. See ibid. ('There is no specific or limiting recitation of... improved computer technology...'); Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 28–30. Nor do they effect an improvement in any other technology or technical field. See, e.g., Diehr, 450 U. S., at 177–178. Instead, the claims at issue amount to 'nothing significantly more' than an instruction to apply the abstract idea of intermediated settlement using some unspecified, generic computer." I don't see this decision as being too far removed from previous decisions. Regardless, this is a step in the right direction, and is a(nother) blow against the patentability of abstract ideas, and a blow against the patent trolls. Separately, no decision on ABC vs. Aereo issued today. Aereo lives to see another day, then. Good.
PolemicThoughts 12y ago
“Simply appending conventional steps, specified at a high level of generality,” to a method already “well known in the art” is not “enough” to supply the “ ‘inventive concept’ ” needed to make this transformation [into a patent-eligible invention]. How does this differ from/alter existing law? Is this ruling just a clarification?
- smackfu 12y ago
  In the federal court decision, there were dissents about how to decide that the patent was invalid, although everyone agreed it was invalid. The details are over my head.
notacoward 12y ago
I think the key sentence is this. "claims, which merely require generic computer implementation, fail to transform that abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention" In other words, start with an idea that's not patentable because it's abstract. Merely specifying its implementation on a computer doesn't make the original idea more concrete or more patentable. Therefore the claim on the idea is invalid, therefore other claims based on that one are too. So what's left? If the application to a computer is itself both novel enough and concrete enough, then that might still be considered patentable. Is that possible? Isn't the application to a generic computer still basically an abstract idea? Must it be an application to a specific type of computer to qualify? I think questions of this sort are going to be the new battleground. The war continues, but the front has moved in what seems to be a good direction. Disclaimers: (1) IANAL, (2) I have a bunch of patents both granted and pending through my employer, so this decision might actually hurt me financially.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > In other words, start with an idea that's not patentable because it's abstract. Merely specifying its implementation on a computer doesn't make the original idea more concrete or more patentable. Therefore the claim on the idea is invalid, therefore other claims based on that one are too. So what's left? Computer implementations that are not "generic". A specific computer implementation of an abstract idea might be patentable. But a generic one (i.e., one that amounts to <abstract idea> + "on a computer") is not. > If the application to a computer is itself both novel enough and concrete enough, then that might still be considered patentable. Is that possible? Exactly, though, really, the nature of general purpose digital computers is such that, if its not calling for novel hardware, that is probably indistinguishable from a generic computer implementation of a more concrete version of the abstract idea, which concrete version would probably itself be patentable independent of the computer implementation.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    Take, for example, IBM's patents on alias analysis. You can't patent the abstract concept of alias analysis, even if you describe how to do it in very generic terms on a computer. However, you can probably patent Steensgard's specific, near-linear-time algorithm for doing so: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/pingali/CS380C/2007fa/papers/steensgard.pdf http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/pingali/CS380C/2007fa/papers/....
sanxiyn 12y ago
This basically seems to be a verbatim repeat of Bilski v. Kappos.
- phkahler 12y ago
  And we shall continue to get repeats until someone actually forces the lower courts to get their shit together or go home.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    Both the District Court and the en banc panel of the CAFC came to the same conclusion as the Supreme Court, it was only the initial appeal to a smaller CAFC panel that came to a different conclusion. So its really hard to paint this Supreme Court decision as essential because the "lower courts" are not getting things right, since both the trial court and the last panel before the Supreme Court to hear the case got it right (insofar as the Supreme Court decision defines "right".)
wes-exp 12y ago
Summary: http://patentlyo.com/patent/2014/06/claims-invalid-section.html http://patentlyo.com/patent/2014/06/claims-invalid-section.h...
rayiner 12y ago
This is a very good opinion, tightly argued based on the precedent. And frankly, unsurprising given the relevant precedent (Diehr, Benson, Mayo). The opinion has three parts: 1) The Court identifies the abstract idea contained in the patent as the general concept of intermediated settlement. (Slip. Op. at 9) The key takeaway here is the discussion about whether an "abstract idea" has to be on the level of a "law of nature" in order to be excluded. The Court says that an abstract idea need not reduce to some fundamental truth that has always existed. It is sufficient for it to be a "fundamental economic practice" or "longstanding commercial practice," like the concept of "risk hedging" in Bilski. (Slip. Op. at 10) 2) The Court looks to see if the patent adds anything more to the abstract idea, and concludes that all it does is describe how to implement the idea in a general computer, in the generic and conventional way. (Slip. Op. at 12, 15) The Court analogizes to Mayo, in which it decided that the claimed method amounted to no more than instructing doctors as to how to use a well-known process for measuring metabolite levels to diagnose their patients. (Slip. Op. at 11) The Court states that the claimed method simply describes how to instruct a computer to perform the abstract idea of intermediating settlement. The Court makes a point of noting that the computer implementation described here is "wholly generic" and that "[i]n short, each step does no more than require a generic computer to perform generic computer functions." (Slip. Op. at 13, 15) 3) The Court concludes that the "system" claims are no different in substance from the method claims: "But what petitioner characterizes as specific hardware—a 'data processing system' with a 'communications controller' and 'data storage unit,' for example, see App. 954, 958, 1257—is purely functional and generic. Nearly every computer will include a 'communications controller' and 'data storage unit' capable of performing the basic calculation, storage, and transmission functions required by the method claims." (Slip. Op. at 16)
- josaka 12y ago
  This is an opinion everyone can love because the term "abstract idea" means something different to each reader. I think that's intentional. They're shifting authority from juries to judges. The wording gives judges a lot of leeway to kill patents by applying the loosely defined "abstract idea" label and then looking for conventional steps that remain, an analysis that seems a lot like the obviousness analysis that used to be reserved for juries.
sanxiyn 12y ago
Favorite quote: "This Court has long warned against interpreting 101 in ways that make patent eligibility depend simply on the draftman's art."
mbell 12y ago
I think the section throwing out the BS 'computer system assembly' bit may have the largest impact. I've read a number of patents that use that as their only real mechanism to be granted (see page 16 section C).
- cratermoon 12y ago
  Yes, but it's about 2 decades too late. All the "...on a computer" patents that cover the big things -- selling books, taking a picture on a white background, measuring distances -- have been done and extracted their costs from the industry and consumers.
  - mbell 12y ago
    I think there is value in this ruling beyond 'what is a computer'. For example I founded a startup a number of years ago to do traffic monitoring with an FMCW radar based sensor. In the process of researching patents in the area I found a bunch of patents that were in effect 'radar applied to traffic monitoring'. IANAL but my interpretation of a large number of them was that they were granted based heavily on block diagrams that 'looked novel' but where really just a matter of taking the block diagram of any old off the shelf DSP SoC and dumping it in the patent (in uglier form of course). It is the same as how ridiculous patents are written for software, 'A system comprising of an analog to digital conversion module, a filtering module, a mixing module, a processing modules....blah, blah, blah'. Depending on the interpretation of this ruling (which I don't know enough to comment on), it could impact a lot of patents, both in and out of the software space.
higherpurpose 12y ago
Some thoughts on the ruling: http://www.vox.com/2014/6/19/5824130/7-thoughts-on-the-supreme-courts-software-patent-ruling http://www.vox.com/2014/6/19/5824130/7-thoughts-on-the-supre... Shame they didn't abolish the business method patents at the very least, if not all software patents.
spacemanmatt 12y ago
Let the motions for summary judgement commence!
grellas 12y ago
One of the horrid things about law is how it can be dissembled by those whose job is to practice it. This drives people crazy. They know something is real. Yet, especially if they are caught in its hooks, they watch how law can be applied such that results are absurdly divorced from the reality they know. Our advocacy process has many fine elements and yet this is one of its tragic by-products: having the best and the brightest in the field become instruments in trying to obtain cynically-motivated decisions that further some narrow (usually economic) interest at the expense of truth and justice. That has been happening for a long time now in the patent field as armies of very bright lawyers have found clever ways to concoct patents out of what really should be unpatentable ideas through the art of clever drafting. Well, this decision gives top-down guidance to judges to cut through such dissimulation in the area of patents and to look at the reality by asking, in effect, "is this really inventive or is it simply a product of the draftsman's craft parading as being somehow inventive." That is the right question to ask in such cases and it should go a long way towards reining in some of the more absurd abuses of recent times. The case in nonetheless only an incremental step building on solid precedent (as well-assessed by rayiner) and not a radical shift by the Court. Many had hoped, for example, that this case could be used as a means of delivering a death-blow to all software patents on the grounds that they could all be labeled nothing more than basic mathematical algorithms that happen to apply to a computer. Yet, in its decision, the Court not only did not address this sort of argument but it also carefully emphasized the idea that it was to "tread carefully" in how it might choose to exclude even fundamental "building blocks of human ingenuity" (i.e., laws of nature, natural phenomena, abstract ideas) from patent eligibility "lest this exclusionary principle . . . swallow up all of patent law." To me, this signifies that the cautious approach signaled in Bilski - that is, that of gradually cutting back on the excesses spawned in the past two decades in the area of patent-eligible subject matter - will continue. So don't hold your breath awaiting any court-driven abolition of software patents generally. That will have to await a legislative solution, if it is to come about at all.
- DannyBee 12y ago
  Well, actually, it does help a lot. In particular, they said ""claims, which merely require generic computer implementation, fail to transform that abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention"" Historically, federal circuit precedent said exactly the opposite - that when a generic computer was programmed for a specific purpose, it was now a special purpose machine and patentable. "For computer implemented processes, the “machine” is often disclosed as a general purpose computer. In these cases, the general purpose computer may be sufficiently “particular” when programmed to perform the process steps. Such programming creates a new machine because a general purpose computer, in effect, becomes a special purpose computer once it is programmed to perform particular functions pursuant to instructions from program software." This decision should, if the federal circuit actually follows it, knock out a large set of software patents.
jackgavigan 12y ago
This is fantastic news. Those patents were ridiculous. Part of my day job is figuring out how to go about automating or "electronifying" processes relating to financial trading and risk management. In other words, I look at things that people currently do manually (or decide in their heads) and I figure out how it can be codified into language or an algorithm that a developer can turn into code. Patents like this (and plenty of similar patents that have been granted[1]) effectively try to claim ownership over the concept of automating what is usually (but not always) a pre-existing business process, using a computer. That's not invention. It's problem-solving. And it's not like the person filing the patent is even solving the problem - they're just patenting the concept of a solution to that problem. In effect, they're trying to patent my work output. It's like someone filed a patent ten years ago on "Methods and apparatus relating to the matching of people seeking temporary accomodation and householders who are willing to rent out their spare rooms", without ever actually having built implemented it, then popped up when Airbnb came along, saying "Hey, we have a patent on that! Pay up!" Good fucking riddance. [1] For examples, see http://www.faqs.org/patents/assignee/goldman-sachs-co/ http://www.faqs.org/patents/assignee/goldman-sachs-co/
- makomk 12y ago
  Yeah, it's absurd. Somehow, patent applicants have been able to have their cake and eat it - they've been able to get away without having to describe how to actually solve the problem because it's obvious to someone skilled in the art, but yet still get a patent for it because at the same time it's supposedly not obvious to those skilled in the art.
not_that_noob 12y ago
Great decision. Once in a while they do get it right :) The hard part was balancing genuine innovation (from small inventors, pharma, etc.) vs. squashing trolls. This goes a long way toward whacking trolls while leaving in place what the patent system was meant for - the fostering of innovation for the benefit of society. Well played.
ajb 12y ago
Is Gene Quinn pissed at this: http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2014/06/19/scotus-rules-alice-software-claims-patent-ineligible/id=50120/ http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2014/06/19/scotus-rules-alice-soft... "In what can only be described as an intellectually bankrupt opinion..." Wow. He thinks it will invalidate lots of software patents - not by invalidating software patents per se, but the way they have been written to date. I'm not qualified to give an opinion, but I would be interested to know if that is a mainstream view.
- kbutler 12y ago
  Quinn's analysis appears pretty shallow - his discussion of the Watson patentability boils down to "it should be patentable because it's like the star trek computer" and "doing something faster is always patentable". He also asserts that increased difficulty of getting software patents "means we won’t get disclosures, information will be held as trade secrets, and those who follow will not be able to stand on the shoulders of those who come before them." As I have yet to hear of anyone ever getting a single useful idea from a software patent disclosure, I view this as a completely acceptable consequence.
- WildUtah 12y ago
  but I would be interested to know if that is a mainstream view. Quinn's unique opinions are never the mainstream view. He's an energetic and smart advocate for anything, no matter how extreme, that would make the patent bar more money at the expense of actual innovation. You can read his blog for a series of crazy overhyped claims for big new ideas in software whenever patents are issued. They're always bad or old or trivial or obvious ideas that some big company has just managed to get a right to monopolize. Canceling all the patents he loves so much would be very, very good for the industry. As to whether this will affect many patents in the long run, we can only watch what the CAFC does in the next year or two.
- fpgeek 12y ago
  Oh my god. I can only hope his views aren't mainstream. Quoting from the link: "This doesn’t mean that moving forward software won’t be patentable, it just means that getting a software patent will be much more difficult than it ever has been. Software can be described by reference to a series of physical actions operating through gates. This type of micro level description of what happens is going to be required, which means getting a patent for software has just become much more expensive and time consuming." The disconnect between how he (apparently) thinks software works and what really happens is mind-boggling. He seems to have absolutely no idea that the same program (even down to the same machine code) will create radically different "physical actions operating through gates" on processors with different micro-architectures (or with an emulator or ...). Even if you could get a patent based on a description of these "physical actions" in a specific execution context, such a patent would be practically worthless. It would be like having a patent on implementing your idea on a Pentium. Anyone could trivially get around that by choosing a Pentium Pro (or an Athlon or some random ARM core or whatever).
eqnoob123 12y ago
When I saw the headline I wished it was Alice Corp v. Bob Bank
zenciadam 12y ago
rip amazon one click patent.

238 points by sthu11182 12y ago

A little more clarity on abstract ideas, but not much more

The Court has begun to limit the scope of software patents, but has not eliminated them. This ruling is a step in the right direction and the unanimity of the Court should be taken as a positive sign for future cases.

spacemanmatt 12y ago

Today I mourn the end of Groklaw, where I would have gone to get the very finest in public discourse and debate about the ruling.

angersock 12y ago
Yep. Damn shame. :(
- ascotan 12y ago
  I didn't know they went down. Terrible.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 12y ago
    With the Snowden releases PJ realized she couldn't protect the anonymity of her sources, so she shut down to keep them safe.

cbr 12y ago

"Held: Because the claims are drawn to a patent-ineligible abstract idea, they are not patent eligible"

wging 12y ago
(Decided unanimously.)
- mcdan 12y ago
  a concurrent not dissenting opinion was filed so it wasn't a 5-4 split or something, the other justices came to the same conclusion just via a different route.
  - sanxiyn 12y ago
    (Very short) concurring opinion is there because those judges believe all business method patents should be abolished, just as they believed so in Bilski v. Kappos.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

revscat 12y ago

From p. 15 of the decision: "The method claims do not, for example, purport to improve the functioning of the computer itself. See ibid. ('There is no specific or limiting recitation of... improved computer technology...'); Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 28–30. Nor do they effect an improvement in any other technology or technical field. See, e.g., Diehr, 450 U. S., at 177–178. Instead, the claims at issue amount to 'nothing significantly more' than an instruction to apply the abstract idea of intermediated settlement using some unspecified, generic computer." I don't see this decision as being too far removed from previous decisions. Regardless, this is a step in the right direction, and is a(nother) blow against the patentability of abstract ideas, and a blow against the patent trolls. Separately, no decision on ABC vs. Aereo issued today. Aereo lives to see another day, then. Good.

PolemicThoughts 12y ago

“Simply appending conventional steps, specified at a high level of generality,” to a method already “well known in the art” is not “enough” to supply the “ ‘inventive concept’ ” needed to make this transformation [into a patent-eligible invention]. How does this differ from/alter existing law? Is this ruling just a clarification?

smackfu 12y ago
In the federal court decision, there were dissents about how to decide that the patent was invalid, although everyone agreed it was invalid. The details are over my head.

notacoward 12y ago

I think the key sentence is this. "claims, which merely require generic computer implementation, fail to transform that abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention" In other words, start with an idea that's not patentable because it's abstract. Merely specifying its implementation on a computer doesn't make the original idea more concrete or more patentable. Therefore the claim on the idea is invalid, therefore other claims based on that one are too. So what's left? If the application to a computer is itself both novel enough and concrete enough, then that might still be considered patentable. Is that possible? Isn't the application to a generic computer still basically an abstract idea? Must it be an application to a specific type of computer to qualify? I think questions of this sort are going to be the new battleground. The war continues, but the front has moved in what seems to be a good direction. Disclaimers: (1) IANAL, (2) I have a bunch of patents both granted and pending through my employer, so this decision might actually hurt me financially.

dragonwriter 12y ago
> In other words, start with an idea that's not patentable because it's abstract. Merely specifying its implementation on a computer doesn't make the original idea more concrete or more patentable. Therefore the claim on the idea is invalid, therefore other claims based on that one are too. So what's left? Computer implementations that are not "generic". A specific computer implementation of an abstract idea might be patentable. But a generic one (i.e., one that amounts to <abstract idea> + "on a computer") is not. > If the application to a computer is itself both novel enough and concrete enough, then that might still be considered patentable. Is that possible? Exactly, though, really, the nature of general purpose digital computers is such that, if its not calling for novel hardware, that is probably indistinguishable from a generic computer implementation of a more concrete version of the abstract idea, which concrete version would probably itself be patentable independent of the computer implementation.
- rayiner 12y ago
  Take, for example, IBM's patents on alias analysis. You can't patent the abstract concept of alias analysis, even if you describe how to do it in very generic terms on a computer. However, you can probably patent Steensgard's specific, near-linear-time algorithm for doing so: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/pingali/CS380C/2007fa/papers/steensgard.pdf http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/pingali/CS380C/2007fa/papers/....

sanxiyn 12y ago

This basically seems to be a verbatim repeat of Bilski v. Kappos.

phkahler 12y ago
And we shall continue to get repeats until someone actually forces the lower courts to get their shit together or go home.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  Both the District Court and the en banc panel of the CAFC came to the same conclusion as the Supreme Court, it was only the initial appeal to a smaller CAFC panel that came to a different conclusion. So its really hard to paint this Supreme Court decision as essential because the "lower courts" are not getting things right, since both the trial court and the last panel before the Supreme Court to hear the case got it right (insofar as the Supreme Court decision defines "right".)

wes-exp 12y ago

Summary: http://patentlyo.com/patent/2014/06/claims-invalid-section.html http://patentlyo.com/patent/2014/06/claims-invalid-section.h...

rayiner 12y ago

This is a very good opinion, tightly argued based on the precedent. And frankly, unsurprising given the relevant precedent (Diehr, Benson, Mayo). The opinion has three parts: 1) The Court identifies the abstract idea contained in the patent as the general concept of intermediated settlement. (Slip. Op. at 9) The key takeaway here is the discussion about whether an "abstract idea" has to be on the level of a "law of nature" in order to be excluded. The Court says that an abstract idea need not reduce to some fundamental truth that has always existed. It is sufficient for it to be a "fundamental economic practice" or "longstanding commercial practice," like the concept of "risk hedging" in Bilski. (Slip. Op. at 10) 2) The Court looks to see if the patent adds anything more to the abstract idea, and concludes that all it does is describe how to implement the idea in a general computer, in the generic and conventional way. (Slip. Op. at 12, 15) The Court analogizes to Mayo, in which it decided that the claimed method amounted to no more than instructing doctors as to how to use a well-known process for measuring metabolite levels to diagnose their patients. (Slip. Op. at 11) The Court states that the claimed method simply describes how to instruct a computer to perform the abstract idea of intermediating settlement. The Court makes a point of noting that the computer implementation described here is "wholly generic" and that "[i]n short, each step does no more than require a generic computer to perform generic computer functions." (Slip. Op. at 13, 15) 3) The Court concludes that the "system" claims are no different in substance from the method claims: "But what petitioner characterizes as specific hardware—a 'data processing system' with a 'communications controller' and 'data storage unit,' for example, see App. 954, 958, 1257—is purely functional and generic. Nearly every computer will include a 'communications controller' and 'data storage unit' capable of performing the basic calculation, storage, and transmission functions required by the method claims." (Slip. Op. at 16)

josaka 12y ago
This is an opinion everyone can love because the term "abstract idea" means something different to each reader. I think that's intentional. They're shifting authority from juries to judges. The wording gives judges a lot of leeway to kill patents by applying the loosely defined "abstract idea" label and then looking for conventional steps that remain, an analysis that seems a lot like the obviousness analysis that used to be reserved for juries.

sanxiyn 12y ago

Favorite quote: "This Court has long warned against interpreting 101 in ways that make patent eligibility depend simply on the draftman's art."

mbell 12y ago

I think the section throwing out the BS 'computer system assembly' bit may have the largest impact. I've read a number of patents that use that as their only real mechanism to be granted (see page 16 section C).

cratermoon 12y ago
Yes, but it's about 2 decades too late. All the "...on a computer" patents that cover the big things -- selling books, taking a picture on a white background, measuring distances -- have been done and extracted their costs from the industry and consumers.
- mbell 12y ago
  I think there is value in this ruling beyond 'what is a computer'. For example I founded a startup a number of years ago to do traffic monitoring with an FMCW radar based sensor. In the process of researching patents in the area I found a bunch of patents that were in effect 'radar applied to traffic monitoring'. IANAL but my interpretation of a large number of them was that they were granted based heavily on block diagrams that 'looked novel' but where really just a matter of taking the block diagram of any old off the shelf DSP SoC and dumping it in the patent (in uglier form of course). It is the same as how ridiculous patents are written for software, 'A system comprising of an analog to digital conversion module, a filtering module, a mixing module, a processing modules....blah, blah, blah'. Depending on the interpretation of this ruling (which I don't know enough to comment on), it could impact a lot of patents, both in and out of the software space.

higherpurpose 12y ago

Some thoughts on the ruling: http://www.vox.com/2014/6/19/5824130/7-thoughts-on-the-supreme-courts-software-patent-ruling http://www.vox.com/2014/6/19/5824130/7-thoughts-on-the-supre... Shame they didn't abolish the business method patents at the very least, if not all software patents.

spacemanmatt 12y ago

Let the motions for summary judgement commence!

grellas 12y ago

One of the horrid things about law is how it can be dissembled by those whose job is to practice it. This drives people crazy. They know something is real. Yet, especially if they are caught in its hooks, they watch how law can be applied such that results are absurdly divorced from the reality they know. Our advocacy process has many fine elements and yet this is one of its tragic by-products: having the best and the brightest in the field become instruments in trying to obtain cynically-motivated decisions that further some narrow (usually economic) interest at the expense of truth and justice. That has been happening for a long time now in the patent field as armies of very bright lawyers have found clever ways to concoct patents out of what really should be unpatentable ideas through the art of clever drafting. Well, this decision gives top-down guidance to judges to cut through such dissimulation in the area of patents and to look at the reality by asking, in effect, "is this really inventive or is it simply a product of the draftsman's craft parading as being somehow inventive." That is the right question to ask in such cases and it should go a long way towards reining in some of the more absurd abuses of recent times. The case in nonetheless only an incremental step building on solid precedent (as well-assessed by rayiner) and not a radical shift by the Court. Many had hoped, for example, that this case could be used as a means of delivering a death-blow to all software patents on the grounds that they could all be labeled nothing more than basic mathematical algorithms that happen to apply to a computer. Yet, in its decision, the Court not only did not address this sort of argument but it also carefully emphasized the idea that it was to "tread carefully" in how it might choose to exclude even fundamental "building blocks of human ingenuity" (i.e., laws of nature, natural phenomena, abstract ideas) from patent eligibility "lest this exclusionary principle . . . swallow up all of patent law." To me, this signifies that the cautious approach signaled in Bilski - that is, that of gradually cutting back on the excesses spawned in the past two decades in the area of patent-eligible subject matter - will continue. So don't hold your breath awaiting any court-driven abolition of software patents generally. That will have to await a legislative solution, if it is to come about at all.

DannyBee 12y ago
Well, actually, it does help a lot. In particular, they said ""claims, which merely require generic computer implementation, fail to transform that abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention"" Historically, federal circuit precedent said exactly the opposite - that when a generic computer was programmed for a specific purpose, it was now a special purpose machine and patentable. "For computer implemented processes, the “machine” is often disclosed as a general purpose computer. In these cases, the general purpose computer may be sufficiently “particular” when programmed to perform the process steps. Such programming creates a new machine because a general purpose computer, in effect, becomes a special purpose computer once it is programmed to perform particular functions pursuant to instructions from program software." This decision should, if the federal circuit actually follows it, knock out a large set of software patents.

jackgavigan 12y ago

This is fantastic news. Those patents were ridiculous. Part of my day job is figuring out how to go about automating or "electronifying" processes relating to financial trading and risk management. In other words, I look at things that people currently do manually (or decide in their heads) and I figure out how it can be codified into language or an algorithm that a developer can turn into code. Patents like this (and plenty of similar patents that have been granted[1]) effectively try to claim ownership over the concept of automating what is usually (but not always) a pre-existing business process, using a computer. That's not invention. It's problem-solving. And it's not like the person filing the patent is even solving the problem - they're just patenting the concept of a solution to that problem. In effect, they're trying to patent my work output. It's like someone filed a patent ten years ago on "Methods and apparatus relating to the matching of people seeking temporary accomodation and householders who are willing to rent out their spare rooms", without ever actually having built implemented it, then popped up when Airbnb came along, saying "Hey, we have a patent on that! Pay up!" Good fucking riddance. [1] For examples, see http://www.faqs.org/patents/assignee/goldman-sachs-co/ http://www.faqs.org/patents/assignee/goldman-sachs-co/

makomk 12y ago
Yeah, it's absurd. Somehow, patent applicants have been able to have their cake and eat it - they've been able to get away without having to describe how to actually solve the problem because it's obvious to someone skilled in the art, but yet still get a patent for it because at the same time it's supposedly not obvious to those skilled in the art.

not_that_noob 12y ago

Great decision. Once in a while they do get it right :) The hard part was balancing genuine innovation (from small inventors, pharma, etc.) vs. squashing trolls. This goes a long way toward whacking trolls while leaving in place what the patent system was meant for - the fostering of innovation for the benefit of society. Well played.

ajb 12y ago

Is Gene Quinn pissed at this: http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2014/06/19/scotus-rules-alice-software-claims-patent-ineligible/id=50120/ http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2014/06/19/scotus-rules-alice-soft... "In what can only be described as an intellectually bankrupt opinion..." Wow. He thinks it will invalidate lots of software patents - not by invalidating software patents per se, but the way they have been written to date. I'm not qualified to give an opinion, but I would be interested to know if that is a mainstream view.

kbutler 12y ago
Quinn's analysis appears pretty shallow - his discussion of the Watson patentability boils down to "it should be patentable because it's like the star trek computer" and "doing something faster is always patentable". He also asserts that increased difficulty of getting software patents "means we won’t get disclosures, information will be held as trade secrets, and those who follow will not be able to stand on the shoulders of those who come before them." As I have yet to hear of anyone ever getting a single useful idea from a software patent disclosure, I view this as a completely acceptable consequence.
WildUtah 12y ago
but I would be interested to know if that is a mainstream view. Quinn's unique opinions are never the mainstream view. He's an energetic and smart advocate for anything, no matter how extreme, that would make the patent bar more money at the expense of actual innovation. You can read his blog for a series of crazy overhyped claims for big new ideas in software whenever patents are issued. They're always bad or old or trivial or obvious ideas that some big company has just managed to get a right to monopolize. Canceling all the patents he loves so much would be very, very good for the industry. As to whether this will affect many patents in the long run, we can only watch what the CAFC does in the next year or two.
fpgeek 12y ago
Oh my god. I can only hope his views aren't mainstream. Quoting from the link: "This doesn’t mean that moving forward software won’t be patentable, it just means that getting a software patent will be much more difficult than it ever has been. Software can be described by reference to a series of physical actions operating through gates. This type of micro level description of what happens is going to be required, which means getting a patent for software has just become much more expensive and time consuming." The disconnect between how he (apparently) thinks software works and what really happens is mind-boggling. He seems to have absolutely no idea that the same program (even down to the same machine code) will create radically different "physical actions operating through gates" on processors with different micro-architectures (or with an emulator or ...). Even if you could get a patent based on a description of these "physical actions" in a specific execution context, such a patent would be practically worthless. It would be like having a patent on implementing your idea on a Pentium. Anyone could trivially get around that by choosing a Pentium Pro (or an Athlon or some random ARM core or whatever).

eqnoob123 12y ago

When I saw the headline I wished it was Alice Corp v. Bob Bank

zenciadam 12y ago

rip amazon one click patent.