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Subtle Change in Patent Case Law
An Anonymous Coward sends us this: "A friend sent me
this link
on Yahoo to a somewhat obscure court ruling which
may have important consequences for patents, reverse
engineering, and the like. I'm not a lawyer so I can't
really assess the full impact of this ruling, but my
friend (who is a law student) claims that it is a fairly
big deal in the intellectual property realm." The article does a good job of explaining.
Of course nobody is going to read this, since typical slashdot kiddies just look at the most recent articles, but anyway...
This is a good decision. It gives a little teeth back into the examination process, which relatively recently has been eroded to the point of a joke. Now, at least, if you submit a patent that the examiner initially rejects because it is overly broad, that initial decision will stick - even if you subsequently narrow the scope to get the application approved.
Even though I have about a dozen patent and patents pending, I can't help but believe this is a good thing, and will promote innovation. I only hope the Supreme Court doesn't choose to overturn this one.