Judges Debate Patents and If New Software Makes a Computer a "New Machine"

First time accepted submitter ectoman writes "A third party steps into a financial transaction to make sure all parties exchange funds at the same time and as expected. Can you patent this process? What if the third party is a computer? Rob Tiller, vice president and general counsel for Red Hat, details a recent court ruling on this very matter—one that has critical implications for the future of software patents, and one that divided the judges involved. Tiller writes that: 'The judges mostly agreed that the idea of managing settlement risk with a third party was abstract such that by itself it could not be patented. They differed, though, on whether using a general purpose computer for managing settlement risk meant that the patents avoided invalidity based on abstraction.' Interestingly, some judges suggested that a computer becomes a 'new machine' every time it loads different software."

Comments

wow

[Anonymous Coward]

If we can slap 'on a computer' onto an old idea to patent it, can we slap on another 'on a computer' to patent it for virtual machines?

I dunno

[marcello_dl]

As much as I hate trivial patents in any field, I must admit that when I wipe windows off a pc and put debian on it, it sure feels like a new machine...

Re:It does

[ebno-10db]

"Almost any software can be converted into a physical machine"

I think you maybe meant "virtual" machine?

The OP was right. As Archimedes said, give me enough gates and a big enough power supply and I can implement anything in hardware.

Reading this story makes me feel like a new man

[istartedi]

Reading this story makes me feel like a new man. Those bills? You'll have to track down the old guy if you want them paid.