"Bilski" Case May End Business Method Patents

hey sends us to a blog at NYTimes outlining the upcoming appeal of the case known as "re Bilski," which could spell the end of patents on methods of doing business later this year. One patent expert is quoted: "I think this is the unraveling of business method patents... I think there is a process we are going to go through to get there and the Supreme Court is going to be the one that decides it." But another expert thinks the case is unlikely to bring down the whole class of patents: "Definitions of business method patents always end up being circular. You can't really ban something unless you can define it and no one is offering a definition we can use."

Comments

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[theaceoffire]

If you can't define it, you lose your patent. That would fix most of our issues, because people who have to define their patent in easy to understand terms will suddenly find that there is prior art, or that someone else already has it.

Eli Whitney pwns Ford

[huckamania]

Look it up for yourself, but Eli had a working assembly line and replaceable parts, both innovations ahead of their time. He was a genius and yet all we remember (are taught) is that he invented the cotton gin.

Before Eli Whitney, firearms were custom built by hand.

How about this definition:

[Moraelin]

How about this, very pragmatical definition:

1. if it's something that one or more humans must do, you can't patent it. (I.e., no patenting "you show the ticket to the doorman".)

2. if the same process could realistically be done by a finite and small number of humans, and your programs/modules/robots/whatever just automate a human's role there, you can't patent it. (I.e., no patenting "you input your ticket's number to the program.")

3. If a nearly identical process -- i.e., serves the same practical purpose and the essential steps are the same, or minor variations of the same step -- is already in use with humans or in any other form or medium, you can't slap a "in software" or "with computers" on it and patent the same bloody thing _again_.

The above, btw, comes from someone who actually likes patents as a general idea. I'm all for rewarding people who research new stuff, create new technologies, and/or invent new products. By all means, we need more of that stuff, and it's only fair to reward the people who invested massive money and manpower into researching it. In fact, at the risk of allienating a good chunk of slashdotters, I'm even for more of that in software. If that's what it takes to get more people into researching brand new stuff, I'm all for it.

I _am_ however, dismayed by the joke that most patents actually end up being. I think it's time to revert to the original idea of rewarding technological progress, and weed out the chaff that doesn't do anything towards that end. Starting with the rehashes of an existing technique, only with "in software" or "with a computer" slapped upon it.

Re:How about this definition:

[Iron Condor]

The above, btw, comes from someone who actually likes patents as a general idea. I'm all for rewarding people who research new stuff, create new technologies, and/or invent new products. By all means, we need more of that stuff, and it's only fair to reward the people who invested massive money and manpower into researching it.

Up to here, I agree. If you put in a good day's worth of work, you should get a good day's worth of pay out of it. Heck, if you can negotiate a decent deal, you can get two or even three days pay out of your one day's work.

But if you want to get paid next year, you should have to work next year. My plumber has to. My dentist has to. My lawyer has to. My barber has to. Why should YOU get to retire on the one good day of work you put in ten years ago?

In fact, at the risk of allienating a good chunk of slashdotters, I'm even for more of that in software. If that's what it takes to get more people into researching brand new stuff, I'm all for it.

As we can see in the real world, the opposite happens: If people can have one clever idea in their entire life and then expect never to have to work again because of that one clever idea, then they are expressly NOT interested in ever having a second clever idea. Ever.

99.9% of patents[1] are granted not to people who think of it as a reward for contributing to the good of society, but to lazy parasites who imagine they should get paid in perpetuity because they figured out one trivial and obvious thing that they managed to obscure enough to squeeze it through the patent system.

Thereby not only removing themselves from the innovative pool, but also everybody else who is working anywhere in the vicinity of the same field (and who cannot innovate in this direction any more because it's now patented). Patents are the greatest impediment to human innovation ever invented.

[1] You are hereby challenged to sift through the ~two hundred thousand (and rising) patents issued in the US alone every year and produce ONE per year for the last five years that actually protects some truly new, innovative technology that actually improves humanity in some fashion as to warrant paying the inventor for the rest of his life (which is what a patent amounts to, these days) -- as opposed to being yet another utter triviality with the term "on the internet" slapped onto the end.