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Easy Fix For Software Patents Found In US Patent Act
WebMink writes "What if there was an easy, inexpensive way to bring software patents under control, that did not involve Congress, which applied retrospectively to all patents and which was already part of the U.S. Patent Act? Stanford law professor Mark Lemley thinks he's found it. He asserts that the current runaway destruction being caused by software patents is just like previous problems with U.S. patent law, and that Congress included language in the Patent Act of 1952 that can be invoked over software patents just like it fixed the earlier problems. All it will take is a future defendant in a patent trial using his read of a crucial section of the Patent Act in their defense to establish case law. Can it really be that easy?"
... we'll generate enough cash to... oh wait ... so many people in power don't want to fix the patent system... nevermind.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
I'm sure that, in retrospect, he did.
He said:
>> If courts would faithfully apply the 1952 Act, limiting those claims to the actual algorithms the patentees disclosed and their equivalents,
Clearly the authors were thinking non-obvious stuff with complexity such as a Fourier Transform would be patentable but how about just parts of it? What is the smallest/simplest functional thing that could constitute an algorithm?
If this gets enacted as case law the obvious next step is that Apple will patent the 'for' loop and Microsoft will licence the 'if' statement.
The url *does* have a question mark after the headline!