MS vs AT&T Case Stirs Software Patent Debate

Stormwave0 writes "A Microsoft appeal against a decision for AT&T and their speech recognition patent has reached the Supreme Court. AT&T has argued that they did not license software using the patent for sales overseas. Microsoft, in the original case, argued "that it wasn't really liable for infringing on AT&T's licensing rights because it only supplied the golden disk to the replicator one time, and that disk did not really contain software in a usable form anyway." With that argument rejected, the case has moved in an unexpected direction. The court is now debating whether or not software is actually patentable."

Comments

Somebody might want to tell Steve about this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps Steve Ballmer ought to have checked with legal before mouthing off about Linux and intellectual property yesterday?

Re:Somebody might want to tell Steve about this...

[jimstapleton]

Some people get the book thrown at them, this lawyer will probably get the chair...