Slashdot Mirror
Parties Behind Eolas Patent Reexam Revealed
theodp continues "According to a 4-27 Interview Summary, the USPTO presented Eolas with a 10-14 letter signed by in-house counsel from Microsoft, AOL and Macromedia, a 10-15 letter from Adobe, and a 10-22 letter from the law firm of Sidley Austin (aka Microsoft's lawyers) in connection with its proposed rejection of Eolas' patent claims. All predated the 10-24 letter from the W3C's counsel as well as Berners-Lee's widely-publicized 10-28 letter, which seems unlikely to have prompted the USPTO's detailed 10-30 Reexam Order. The W3C has repeatedly had no comment when asked if the 'newly cited art' provided in its 10-24 filing had already been supplied earlier to the USPTO by others. UPDATE: In response, the W3C's Danny Weitzner points out that the preceding words are mine and should not be confused with those of a distinguished journalist."
the premise that software should constitute patentable subject matter is generally well-settled among the legal community
I don't know just how "well-settled" that is in the US legal community, but it certainly is NOT true outside the US. In particular the EU Parliment is well-settled that software is not patentable subject matter, and that the European Patent Convention explicitly declares that software is not patentable subject matter. This would imply that any software patents granted thus far in Europe have been improperly issued and are invalid.
Yes, the European Council is pushing to validate existing and future software software patents, but as I understand it the Parliment gets the final vote. (Anyone more knowledgable in EU politics is welcome to correct me or elaborate on the process.) Very few software patent cases have been brought to court, but from what I hear they have generally been tossed out as invalid, particularly in Germany.
I present the textbook example of an elegant, useful software invention worthy of patent protection: RSA - the public-key system that permits relatively effortless secured communication via one-way encryption.
Yes. A perfect textbook example of a patent on pure math. Utterly absurd. What next? A patent on doing a basic integral? Oh wait, Diamond v. Diehr was the inital Software Patent upheld by the Supreme Court. It was a patent on preforming a basic integration of heat over time. A patent on a simple equation to calculate time.
Prior to that ruling the US Patent Office consistantly rejected all efforts to patent computer programs on the grounds that programs are mathematical techniques, therefore not patentable. The patent office's own commision said "A series of instructions which control or condition the operation of a data processing machine, generally referred to as a program, shall not be considered patentable regardless of whether the program is claimed as (a) an article, (b) a process described in terms of the operations penformed by a machine pursuant to a program, or (c) one or more machine configurations established by a program.
The US assistant Attorney General had said "The practical results of extending patent monopolies into this area would be to inhibit interchange of information and techniques, to restrain innovation, efficiency and competitive vigor in the growing computer industry, and to raise barriers to new entry. These anti-competitive consequences would result without giving the public, as consideration for the patent grant, any `inventive' contribution to the progress of the arts and sciences."
The initial Diamond v. Diehr ruling REVERSED settled US policy against software patents. The Patent Office then threw the doors wide open. The US Supreme Court simply goofed in Diamond v. Diehr. They thought they were upholding a patent on a physical manufacturing process. There was absolutely nothing new or inventive in the physical manufacturing process, the supposed "invention" was purely in math.
Further note that the RSA patent - and ANY software patent for that matter - can be implemented through PURE THOUGHT. It is possible to preform the RSA exponention just by thinking the calculations in your head. Using a computer merely makes it easier, faster, and more reliable to preform those basic math calculations. There is absolutely nothing new, "inventive", or non-obvious in using an ordinary computer to preform basic math calculations faster and more reliably.
It is just absurd to suggest that a person stitting motionless and just *thinking* could violate the RSA patent (or any other software patent). And it is also absurd to suggest that the obvious step of using an abacus, a slide-rule, a calculator, or an ordinary computer to speed up the exact the same calculations is somehow new, inventive, non-obvious, or patentable. If you want to defend software patents then this is the ke
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.