Slashdot Mirror
Software Patent Sanity on the Way?
Ars Technica is reporting that the traditionally silent US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) may be starting to turn things around. It seems that in recent action the USPTO has started to make it much easier to invalidate software patents with some saying that the abolition of such patents may be in the distant future. "Duffy cites four recent cases that illustrate the Patent Office's growing hostility to the patenting of software and other abstract concepts. While the USPTO hasn't formally called for the abolition of software patents, the positions it took in these cases do suggest a growing skepticism. In the first two cases, decided last fall, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (which has jurisdiction over patent appeals) upheld patent rejections by the USPTO. They were not software patent cases, as such. In In Re Nuijten, the court considered a patent related to an algorithm for adding a watermark to a digital media file. The Federal Circuit did not invalidate the claims relating to the watermarking algorithm itself; everyone seemed to agree that the algorithm was patentable. Rather, the decision focused on whether a digital signal could be the subject of a patent claim. The court concluded that it could not. A victory for common sense, perhaps, but hardly a rejection of software patents."
I can't resist replying to this comment. It is typical of many Slashdot comments particularly in relation to Patent Law.
I don't know how much the author actually knows about patent law but the comment illustrates a severe lack of understanding.
Patents must and do include "details on how to recreate such an idea". It's called the "description". While you no longer need to produce a prototype there is generally enough in the description for "someone skilled in the art2 to recreate it. In fact the whole reason you don't have to produce a working model is because you might not have the resources available but you want your idea protected while for example you get funding to set up a factory or what not.
I really don't know what you mean by a "secret patent". Since 2001 in the US and the rest of the world for approximately forever, pretty much all granted patents have been published twice. Once 18 months after filing and the second time after grant. Just because you don't know about a patent does not make it secret. All the patent databases are available for free online these days.