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Supreme Court Throws Out Bilski Patent
ciaran_o_riordan writes "The US Supreme Court has finally decided the Bilski case (PDF). We've known that Bilski's patent would get thrown out; that was clear from the open mockery from the judges during last November's hearing. The big question is, since rejecting a particular patent requires providing a general test and explaining why this patent fails that test, how broad will their test be? Will it try to kill the plague of software patents? And is their test designed well enough to stand up to the army of patent lawyers who'll be making a science (and a career) of minimizing and circumventing it? The judges have created a new test, so this will take some reading before any degree of victory can be declared. The important part is pages 5-16 of the PDF, which is the majority opinion. The End Software Patents campaign is already analyzing the decision, and collecting other analyses. Some background is available at Late-comers guide: What is Bilski anyway?"
More analysis of the decision is available at Patently-O.
No, operating this stupid Mac is. Why doesn't it ever "just work" like everyone told me it would? I traded in the blue screen of death for the spinning beachball of death. Hey, what an improvement!
Remember that Groklaw is strongly in favour of software patents, and against anyone who claims that software patents are harmful to open source software (and presumably to the idea of free software). In fact, these days, it seems to be strongly in favour of the IBM position on everything - remember TurboHercules? I'm sure it didn't used to be like this...