The Death of Nearly All Software Patents?

An anonymous reader writes "The Patent and Trademark Office has now made clear that its newly developed position on patentable subject matter will invalidate many and perhaps most software patents, including pioneering patent claims to such innovators as Google, Inc. In a series of cases including In re Nuijten, In re Comiskey and In re Bilski, the Patent and Trademark Office has argued in favor of imposing new restrictions on the scope of patentable subject matter set forth by Congress in article 101 of the Patent Act. In the most recent of these three — the currently pending en banc Bilski appeal — the Office takes the position that process inventions generally are unpatentable unless they 'result in a physical transformation of an article' or are 'tied to a particular machine.'"

Comments

quick

[Tom]

Hope this gets done quickly, because the EU and other players are pushing for software patents and one of the main arguments is "harmonisation with the global (read: US) systems".

And I'm very keen on finding out what their next pseudo-argument is gonna be.

Re:Good

[tambo]

Your not patenting the patent; you are patenting the physical machine.

That is flatly incorrect.

A machine patent claims a particular configuration and interrelation of components: "an A connected to a B and applying pressure to a C..." etc.

And the components don't even need to be particularly stated: a general reference to a "fastener" or a "fastening means" can cover anything that holds part A to part B (a bolt, a nail, a clip, tape, a piece of rope, glue...)

Even in the machine arts, the focus of the patent is the operative principle: the concept of using force, pressure, torque, etc. in a particular way to achieve a particular result. Any machine operating according to that concept is covered by the patent. Of course, that principle may be described with an example, such as a particular combination of parts. And the patentee may find it convenient to describe his own embodiment - the particular components that he chose. But the patent claims, which define the scope of the patent, can be very broad and generic - even in machine patents.

This point is so poorly misunderstood here at Slashdot that I'll write it again: For all types of patents, the defining limitation is the operative concept. So it has ever been.

- David Stein