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Domain: grosche.com
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Comments · 7
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Lawyers weighed the options. We do have a verdict:Allowing software patents has just what you said:
(questionable if any) advantages, and severe disadvantages.
For recent analysis see e.g. this article at Oxford University Press. -
Lawyers v. software patents
Touch screens are obviously hardware. Keyboards are too.
Hence the patent is for "a software system that takes touch input on a virtual keyboard"...Do you realise that without software patents nobody would be able to defend their work using the expertise and diligence of ever patient, kind, humble and scrupulous lawyers?
Actually (and for good reasons) with a few exceptions even lawyers don't seem to like glitches making the system unworkable, such as software and business methods patents. -
Re: Not really surprising
Especially in the world of computers it seems that so many of the patents are of questionable validity. [...] Why do you think Microsoft isn't publicizing the list of patents that it claims linux infringes on? Tons of people will try to dig up prior art as soon as they know what patents MS claims are being infringed upon.
Software patents are bound to cause the trouble they do, virtually "by definition", without an adequate benefit in return, inevitably, and for reasons scholars have known for centuries by now - see this interesting read tracing the issue all the way back through the history of IT itself. -
Software patents "at lawyerpoint" and under fireAs pointed out by Professor Jeremy Phillips, on the unfortunate occasion of political maneuvering to bring the marvels of software patents and business method patents to Europe as well, this article in Oxford University Press's International Journal of Law and Information Technology does a great job of debunking the whole approach - while citing and synthesizing the views of IT&IP luminaries through the past few decades or even centuries. Hopefully, so will the U.S. Supreme Court, finally, at least if Justice Breyer's remarks in Microsoft v. AT&T (transcript) are any indication:
We're operating under the assumption that software is patentable... but we've never held that in this court, ever.
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Does Europe do it better?
The leading article in the current issue of OUP's International Journal of Law and Information Technology features quite a remarkable discussion of these issues in the context of software.
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For an in-depth look at how this policy came about
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Re:UK European Patent convention
The UK is party to the European Patent convention which clearly says that software, organisational rules and business methods are not inventions, not patentable subject matters.
There's a recent paper providing an excellent account of these events and considerations: Software Patents - Boon or Bane for Europe?In the past ten years the European Patent Office tried to establish case law which perverted the EPC and created the EU software patent mess.