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Red Hat Assistant General Counsel Analyses Supreme Court's Patent Ruling
ectoman (594315) writes The U.S. Supreme Court issued a groundbreaking decision concerning software patents, claiming that abstract ideas are not by themselves patentable. The ruling was a cause for celebration among those opposed to software patent abuse, like Red Hat's Vice President and Assistant General Counsel, Rob Tiller. Here, Tiller analyzes and offers some context for the Court's ruling, which "uses the traditional common law methodology of comparing one case to previous similar cases and harmonizing with those most similar."
One step in the right direction!
Are NSA backdoors patentable or not? Considering, large number of them in M$ OS or well known networking gear, it's something to think about in terms of collecting royalties.
celebrate now, but this sort of thing can have unintended consequences... such as when the layoffs start? that will blow chunks.
As I read it, this says an invention is patentable - but implementing the invention on a computer doesn't necessarily add anything. That seems to be very good news for all those silly patents that only claim "on a computer" or "on the internet".
Is it really the end of all the ridiculous lawsuits between Apple, Google and Microsoft?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
This is NOT a land breaking ruling, why in gods good name would the poster say this?? Fact: Abstract Ideas were Never patentable. It has always been the law, so the headline is totally wrong. The main number 1 problem that needs to be cleaned up is the Patent Office they are creating this unnecessary lawsuits, wasted billions because they haven't an idea what an Abstract Idea is? I just don't believe that they are that stupid. This is all IMO but the fact remains Abstract Ideas were never patentable.
Jack of all trades,master of none
It's "analyzes".
If software patents were around back in the 80's then IBM would have patented the hell out of the PC and its BIOS. Only IBM would be making them to this day and they'd cost $5000 for a base model. Only major corporations and well heeled geeks would own them. The Internet would likely still be DarpaNet and I could go on and on. If anyone recollects, IBM's BIOS was reverse engineered, legally, as it was only copied by copyright, as is reasonable and proper. The people that read the code described it and people who had never seen the IBM code wrote their own code to behave similarly, again, all very reasonable and legal. The processor your code runs on is the invention. Your code is your art or writing that makes the processor sing. If I can make my code sing a similar song without copying yours then that's as should be. Code should be copyright-able as are words in a book. Just because you write a clever whodunit does not mean that no one can ever write another!
Your prediction might have been reasonable in 1972. Now, we know what did happen. IBM did in fact get over 50,000 patents, making them one of the top patent holders in the world. Yet, none of your postdictions was true.
Most certainly the patent office needs to train their examiners better in applying the law to the types of inventions they see today (and non-inventions). For example, the law says that a mechanism can be patented. It doesn't say that the result of that mechanism can be patented. It says it must be a new invention. As this case made clear, an old invention being done on a computer doesn't magically become a new invention. It's still an old invention. USPTO needs to train their people on that. Still, many of IBM's 50,000 patents are for new ways of doing things that happened to be done in software. Manufacturers of competing systems had to find new ways of doing those things, or license the patents.
"claiming that abstract ideas are not by themselves patentable"
No, that's not at all what SCOTUS said. SCOTUS said that the abstract ideas presented in the specific patents at issue were not patentable.
I know of a case that had a patent claim on logging. I kid you not. They are just looking for deep pockets to get $$$
I'm confused when you say "none of your postdictions was true." What Marlin wrote is an accurate statement of what happened. I'm also confused about what 50,000 patents you are referring to and how they relate to his statement about the IBM PC BIOS..
IBM did not patent the PC BIOS. The lack of patents allowed IBM PC clones to be possible. That proliferation rapidly expanded the PC industry. This is commonly seen as an example of why software patents should not be allowed.
> I'm confused when you say "none of your postdictions was true." What Marlin wrote is an accurate statement of what happened.
Really, this happened?:
>> the PC and its BIOS. Only IBM would be making them to this day and they'd cost $5000 for a base model.
>> Only major corporations and well heeled geeks would own them.
>> The Internet would likely still be Darpanet go on
I'm pretty sure you can get a PC from Walmart for under $300, and that we're using the internet right now. So no, what he said did not happen.
IBM had a number of patents on the BIOS, such as the way it loaded BIOS modules from adapter cards. Compaq and some other manufacturers found a different way of accomplishing the task in order to steer around the patents. Other manufacturers used IBM's BIOS and paid for it.
So far, it's the patent owners and warchest protectors that seem to be driving the definition of what can and cannot be patented in the digital realm. This should be reversed; there should be an international (or universal) standard definition that a applicant must fulfill before it can even be considered for legal protection.
Just spit-balling here, but maybe it should be a rule of threes; a project must demonstrate it leverages the three parts of digital technology: the hardware, the software and the network. Among each of those, there must be three distinct techniques being used to separate it from common operations and, in each technique, three uncommon modules that can be considered proprietary in nature and therefore be protected as "trade secrets". So, in total, we have a basis for patentability that covers the basic facets of digital products, requires them to define how they set themselves apart and lastly requires that the applicant specify what makes their work unique at the code and/or API level; requiring nine points of uniqueness in each digital facet. No 'black box' definitions either; all patents must encompass and explain the concept that makes the patent... well, patentable.
This not only provides a structure for burden-of-proof arguments, (currently non-existent, apart from the ruling described in OP) but also creates the need for distinguishing one's work to set it apart from what platform developers and shared-library contributors can claim as prior art or common practice. More importantly, it eschews the petty bickering of single-factor patents; things like "swipe to unlock" or "presentation as a square tile with 10% rounded corners" or "putting a virtual button in the corner of the screen to select a program" sort of nonsense.
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
This is a big move in the positive direction. Finally, it seems we are coming to our senses to try and dig our way out of software patent abuse. Unfortunately, there are piles of software patents that huge companies like Microsoft have already filed and have been granted, that Microsoft uses to bully smaller companies. But, if we can stop the bleeding, we actually have a chance at eliminating this awful flaw in the system, which is allowing companies like Microsoft be non-competitive yet extract fees and fines and secret deals with other small companies to secretly squeeze royalties out of them. Just look at the stack of software patent deals that Microsoft has signed with its Android competitors. There is an obvious pattern to its behavior.