Slashdot Mirror
Court Puts Further Limits on Software Patents
An anonymous reader writes "The Wall Street Journal is reporting on a recent court ruling that may severely limit the scope of both software and business model patents. The court found that 'The routine addition of modern electronics to an otherwise unpatentable invention' isn't enough to get over the 'non-obvious' hurdle that every patent is supposed to clear. This is a huge step in the right direction and one of the first admissions from the court system that perhaps software and business model patents have gone too far. 'In August, the Federal Circuit in essence raised the bar for proving willful infringement, a finding that allows a judge to triple a damage award. In April, the Supreme Court handed down a patent decision making it easier for trial-court judges to call an invention "obvious" and therefore ineligible for a patent.'"
There goes the One Click patent. And to think it was only good for a 10 year head start.
This move should also kill a whole bunch of the "... on the internet." patents off.
Thank you for using your common sense to defeat the enemies of innovation.
Three cheers for the independent judiciary.
In April, the Supreme Court handed down a patent decision making it easier for trial-court judges to call an invention "obvious" and therefore ineligible for a patent.
Did this patent decision also make it easier for them to call an invention +5 insightful?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Taking two devices to make an improved, or different device is perfectly valid.
The internet is not a device.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If you RTFA, the litigation was over a business-process that was deemed to be more about thought than process, and therefore not covered.
Although many software patents might be obvious, and pass the Supreme Court test, there are no really good precedents - yet - that cover software patent obviousness, saving the ongoing one-click litigation.
Not as nice or as pertinent as some would like, but I'll take it.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
We had a competence transfer about patents and IP, and as the tutors were explaining what can be patented, the techies in the audience (me included) would exclaim, from time to time "what, you can patent that?" We were just so surprised that you don't need to come up with something original or complicated, not even the software algorithm. I had the impression as if we were almost encouraged to patent the most broad possible vaggueties - the word "idea" only barely applies.
I'm sure other companies do exactly the same.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
The test-case in the article was completely uninteresting to most of us. It was a further comment in the ruling that is "the routine addition of modern electronics to an otherwise unpatentable invention"
What this really is saying is...
If an idea isn't patentable on it's own, then simply doing it with a computer isn't enough to make it patentable.
So if an idea such as "Tell something to somebody using piglatin" isn't patentable, then "Tell something to somebody using piglatin on a computer" or "Tell something to somebody using piglatin on a PDA" is not patentable either.
It could really limit the "dumb" patents.
2144.04[R-1]III. AUTOMATING A MANUAL ACTIVITY
In re Venner, 262 F.2d 91, 95, 120 USPQ 193, 194 (CCPA 1958) (Appellant argued that claims to a permanent mold casting apparatus for molding trunk pistons were allowable over the prior art because the claimed invention combined "old permanent- mold structures together with a timer and solenoid which automatically actuates the known pressure valve system to release the inner core after a predetermined time has elapsed." The court held that broadly providing an automatic or mechanical means to replace a manual activity which accomplished the same result is not sufficient to distinguish over the prior art.). While this case is a little outdated, they're saying that the process would occur manually and all the timer / solenoid combination is doing is automating the formerly manual process. This is expanded to include thought processes too. While it's probably good to have a more recent case back up a good decision made years ago, it won't change patent law any.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
Technically NTP's patents are not for sending wireless email... rather, the patents are more about the "push" technology that is used.
How is their patented "push technology" different from, say, someone with a linux based phone running a stock mail transfer agent (such as sendmail or its successors) on the phone, with his ISP's MTA programmed to forward his mail to his own MTA in the normal fashion, and BIFF (or one of its successors) set up to beep at him when new mail arrives? This is a straightforward configuration of standard components. If you want to be able to read your email when out of range of the cell network it's the obvious way to configure it. No "invention" required.
I have a site, for instance, that receives mail by periodic polling of the ISP using UUCP-over-IP with dialup UUCP backup. If I were to move it to a linux phone - or clone the configuration - and switch the initiation of scheduled UUCP polling from my side to the ISP's side, I'd have one form of what I described in the paragraph above. It would be a typical mail configuration from the earliest days of UUCP-internet mail bridging. The sole change would be that the user's terminal happens to be a cellphone and the dialup polling happens to be by "radio phone" rather than landline.
Similarly if the cloned configuration accepted mail forwarded via SMTP, with the ISP's mail servers as some of the MX record entries (or the only ones), so inbound mail has somewhere to go when the phone itself isn't present on the net.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way