Supreme Court Rules Software Patents Invalid-Without Ever Mentioning Software Once In the Decision
"What this means is that companies like Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Google and others have had the value of their patent portfolios nearly completely erased today. If they wish to remain compliant with Sarbanes Oxley and other laws and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission they will need to level with their shareholders and tell them that their patent portfolios have been decimated."
db is on a plane headed to the Atlas Summit to give a talk about Galt as Inventor. When he gets off the plane, this news will greet him. Imagine a MODERN patent system understanding the manufacturing age but not the information age....
db is on a plane headed to the Atlas Summit to give a talk about Galt as Inventor. When he gets off the plane, this news will greet him. Imagine a MODERN patent system understanding the manufacturing age but not the information age....
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what the hell does that even mean? if you are an expert in patent law you are an expert in patent law. do you mean a scholar is only valid if they are not a patent attorney? or if they are a professor? ok, professor Crouch at Patently-O. He is not as negative as we are on this, but he will point out the absurdity of the ruling.
Thomas and Scalia countered their own arguments in Bilski! that's how absurd they have gotten on these cases. The law was clear. They have moved philosophically in a direction to limit what is patent able because it doesn't feel right. Well it is not their job to write laws-only interpret them. When this all settles, the court will come back likely and say "we didn't mean that." but in the meantime, the USPTO examiners will cite Alice and reject most software applications. The cost for applying has just doubled or tripled and the chances of a grant have gone down significantly. Hide your ideas.
If any inventor was doubting about shrugging, this should convince them.
Another view, the ruling is an understandable reaction to the permitted misuse of patent/intellectual property law which has encouraged mass creation of patents without technical merit and the trading in them, patents which do not describe invention but purportedly predict an invention the patent owner can leech off, a system which does not protect inventors but makes big corporates employ masses of lawyers.
On its face, a 9-0 decision, with the likes of Thomas and Scalia concurring, doesn't seem to me that they got the law wrong. These are two strong private property advocates.
I don't know the particulars of the case. What I read is that the "innovation" existed regardless of the computer and that the addition of the computer did not then create an innovation that would be deemed "patentable." If true, then they got it right.
"You say: “It should make people think twice about trying to patent obvious or non-novel things.”
That wasn’t what the case is about. This case is not about patenting things that are known or obvious. This case was about whether despite something being novel and non-obvious it is still nevertheless patent ineligible. That is the only question under 35 USC 101 to ask and answer. The Supreme Court is clearly conflating 101 with 102/103. That is in direct violation of the requirements of the Patent Statute. So you can celebrate the decision, but the decision is clearly and unambiguously contrary to the law. Of course, at the end of the day the Supreme Court gets the final say, but that doesn’t mean they are right. So now we have a mess. They say one thing and the law says another thing. Under our system of government the law is supposed to be primary unless it is unconstitutional. Since the Supreme Court has not declared the Patent Act unconstitutional it is their duty under our system of government to correctly interpret Acts of Congress. Today they failed. They also failed in Mayo and Myriad as well."
From InfoWorld - a software industry publication
The U.S. Supreme Court delivered its much-anticipated decision in the case of Alice v. CLS today. The case involved an Australian company attempting to enforce patents on software managing risk mitigation in financial transactions; CLS Bank sought a court ruling that the patents were not enforceable. The first court ruled Alice's patents invalid; the Federal Circuit Appeals court reversed that decision; and then the same court, in an en banc hearing, re-ruled that the patents were invalid. The Supreme Court today upheld that ruling.
This is great news for America's software industry: It just became much harder to prove a software patent is valid. In affirming the lower court's en banc decision, the Supreme Court confirmed its previously-devised approach to such matters. It divided the problem into two parts:
◾Is there something Alice is doing that would be patentable without a computer being involved?
◾Does the involvement of a computer transform anything into a patentable subject?
In this case, the answer to both questions was "no." While, characteristically, the court has avoided straying into larger matters (such as the general applicability of software patents), What it did say helps tremendously. First, the court said:
Merely requiring generic computer implementation fails to transform that abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention.
In other words, just slapping a phrase like "a computer that..." in front of something that's not patentable does not magically make it patentable. Secondly, the court said that making it sound all technical is not a magical talisman unlocking patentability.
Read more at: http://www.infoworld.com/t/technology-bu...
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