EFF Asks Supreme Court to Protect FOSS Innovation

euice writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation supports KSR International in a fight against obvious patents. They filed an amicus brief (PDF) yesterday, a short summary is on their news page (August, 23). FTA: 'The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has asked the United States Supreme Court to overturn a dangerous patent law ruling that could pose a serious threat to Free and Open Source Software projects. [...] In a recent decision, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed its own 'suggestion test' as the main method for determining when a patent should be found obvious over knowledge in the public domain. Under this test, even the most obvious incremental advances and add-ons can be patented unless the Patent Office or a defendant in court produces a document that shows someone else suggested it prior to the patent being filed. [...] In its amicus brief filed Tuesday, EFF shows how this 'suggestion test' has led to a massive surge in bogus patenting, especially in software. These bad patents then become weapons against legitimate innovators — especially those working on Free and Open Source Software projects.' For me, this sounds like a really good shot in the right direction."

Comments

Patents should be harder to get

[andrewman327]

In the status quo it is way too easy to patent things that are not real innovation and hold on to that patent forever. Although patents are needed to protect innovation, there is no doubt that they are being abused. When there are companies whose only holdings are IP, something needs to change.

There are many ideas out there about how to fix the patent system, this being one of the more interesting ones. I usually disagree with the EFF but in this case I support them.