Slashdot Mirror
Software Patents Poised To Make a Comeback Under New Patent Office Rules (arstechnica.com)
Ben Klemens writes via Ars Technica: A landmark 2014 ruling by the Supreme Court called into question the validity of many software patents. In the wake of that ruling, countless broad software patents became invalid, dealing a blow to litigation-happy patent trolls nationwide. But this week the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) proposed new rules that would make it easier to patent software. If those rules take effect, it could take us back to the bad old days when it was easy to get broad software patents -- and to sue companies that accidentally infringe them.
The Federal Circuit Appeals Court is the nation's highest patent court below the Supreme Court, and it is notoriously patent friendly. Ever since the Supreme Court's 2014 ruling, known as Alice v. CLS Bank, the Federal Circuit has worked to blunt the ruling's impact. In a 2016 ruling called Enfish, the Federal Circuit ruling took a single sentence from the Supreme Court's 2014 ruling and used it as the legal foundation for approving more software patents. This legal theory, known as the "technical effects doctrine," holds that software that improves the functioning of a computer should be eligible for a patent. A version of this rule has long held sway in Europe, but it has only recently started to have an impact in U.S. law.
This week, the Patent Office published a new draft of the section on examining software and other potentially abstract ideas in its Manual of Patent Examination Procedure (MPEP). This is the official document that helps patent examiners understand and interpret relevant legal principles. The latest version, drawing on recent Federal Circuit rulings, includes far tighter restrictions on what may be excluded from patentability. This matters because there's significant evidence that the proliferation of software patents during the 1990s and 2000s had a detrimental impact on innovation -- precisely the opposite of how patents are supposed to work.
The Federal Circuit Appeals Court is the nation's highest patent court below the Supreme Court, and it is notoriously patent friendly. Ever since the Supreme Court's 2014 ruling, known as Alice v. CLS Bank, the Federal Circuit has worked to blunt the ruling's impact. In a 2016 ruling called Enfish, the Federal Circuit ruling took a single sentence from the Supreme Court's 2014 ruling and used it as the legal foundation for approving more software patents. This legal theory, known as the "technical effects doctrine," holds that software that improves the functioning of a computer should be eligible for a patent. A version of this rule has long held sway in Europe, but it has only recently started to have an impact in U.S. law.
This week, the Patent Office published a new draft of the section on examining software and other potentially abstract ideas in its Manual of Patent Examination Procedure (MPEP). This is the official document that helps patent examiners understand and interpret relevant legal principles. The latest version, drawing on recent Federal Circuit rulings, includes far tighter restrictions on what may be excluded from patentability. This matters because there's significant evidence that the proliferation of software patents during the 1990s and 2000s had a detrimental impact on innovation -- precisely the opposite of how patents are supposed to work.
Yeah, my DAMN balls, loading up ropes to shoot in ur mouths, nerds
It's called copyright.
And at least with copyright, you may be able to make a fair use claim when you make a copy that is strictly for personal use... with patents, no fair use exemption exists.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
when you've got a government staffed with pro-corporate politicians from top to bottom. Start showing up to your primaries folks if you want any of this to change. And start demanding politicians who refuse corporate PAC money, like these.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I patent useing the letter E in software!
>>>>>This legal theory, known as the "technical effects doctrine," holds that software that improves the functioning of a computer should be eligible for a patent.
This would not apply to most software, which is most crap, and make the functioning of a computer worse.
There are in fact many thousands of muslims who not only care more about software patents but have both been issued and defended software patents more than your faggot nazi ass ever will. As they say in Mecca, how bou dah?
Go build a tiny wall with other people's money or something lol.
https://slashdot.org/submissio...
Reportedly, the author of the GPL licensed text-mode casino game "GPC-Slots 2" has rescinded the license from the "Geek feminist" collective.
The original author, after years of silence, notes that the "Geek Feminist" changed[1] a bunch of if-then statements which were preceded by a loop waiting for string input to a switch statement. The author reportedly noted that to use a switch statement in such an instance is no more preformant than the if-thens. Switch statements should be used where the input to the switch statement is numerical, and of a successive nature, for most efficient use of the jump table that is generated from said code.
The author reportedly was offended, after quiet observation of the group, that the "Geek Feminists" mocked his code, mocked his existence as a male, and never did any work on the code afterwards and never updated to include new slot machines added to the original code by author subsequently.
The author notes that he neither sought nor received any compensation for the granted license, that is was a gratuitous license, and that there never was any refutation of his default right to rescind given. (A right founded in the property law of licenses.)
The copyright owner has reportedly watched quietly as each year the "Geek Feminists" published a recount of their heroic efforts regarding his code.[2][3] Presumably he has now had enough of it all...
The author notes that the SF Conservancy attempts to construe a particular clause in the GPL version 2 license text as a "no revocation by grantor clause", however that clause states that if a licensee suffers and automatic-revocation by operation of the license, that licensees down stream from him do not suffer the same fate. The author of "GPC-Slots 2" reportedly notes that said clause does only what it claims to do: clarifies that a downstream licensee, through no fault of his own, is not penalized by the automatic revocation suffered by a licensee he gained a "sub-license" from (for lack of a better term.)
The author reportedly notes that version 3 of the GPL did not exist when he published the code, additionally the author notes that even if there was a clause not to revoke, he was paid no consideration for such a forbearance of a legal right of his and thus said clause is not operative against him, the grantor, should it exist at all.
(Editor's note: GPL version 3 contains an explicit "no-revocation-by-grantor" clause, in addition to a term-of-years that the license is granted for. Both absent in version 2 of the GPL)
The author reportedly has mulled an option to register his copyright and then to seek damages from the "Geek Feminists" if they choose to violate his copyright post-hence.
(Editors note: Statutory damages for willful copyright infringement can amount to $150,000 plus attorney's fees for post registration violations of a differing nature to pre-registration violations.)
[1]https://tinyurl.com/yayocsuo
[2]https://geekfeminism.org
[3]http://geekfeminism.wikia.com
GPC-Slots 2 is a text console mode casino game available for linux with various slot machines, table games, and stock market tokens for the player to test his luck. For the unlucky there is a Russian Roulette function.
Every single judge in the ninth circuit that votes to ignore the Supreme Court needs to be impeached and removed from office. I would also be favorable to giving some of them jail time.
dont have a office in the USA or bank account (you can still accept US dollars etc )
USA is the last place you want to pay tax's
If your selling software even a small amount do as the large corporate entities do and pay no tax... It's the American Corporate Way
vote with your dollars and tax then they might get the message...
If someone said Christians don't care about software patents would you also call them a nazi? Keeping crying nazi, then when there's a real nazi, people will be like "oh trump was a 'nazi' and he wasn't so bad"...
How is it that the Patent Office is even making this kind of rule right now? Is it such an essential agency that its workers were not sent home during the shutdown?
It was with juries full of people with no technical backgrounds or even a basic understanding of patent law that opened the door for patent trolls.
As I see it, one problem with the Federal Circuit handling all patent cases is that there's never a circuit split, which means less threat of the Supreme Court accepting a case to resolve an interpretation.
This matters because there's significant evidence that the proliferation of software patents during the 1990s and 2000s had a detrimental impact on innovation
Okay, I'll bite: evidence about which patents that shouldn't have been granted, but were indeed challenged yet found to be valid? That then retarded which development that we would have had earlier? And we know that already, even though a patent issued from an application from as late as 1998 still has term left?
Software is not an abstract idea nor has that ever been the argument.
Furthermore, these are not "proposed new rules" but new guidance and they are already "in effect" as noted later in the last paragraph. This new guidance is a good thing as it helps promote consistency and ends the craziness that erupted with the Alice decision. It is also entirely consistent with recent court rulings, the problem was that patent examiners are typically not lawyers and are not easily persuaded by legal arguments. By incorporating recent decisions in updated guidance, more consistency in granted patents can be achieved and less effort and money is wasted. This is all a good thing, it does not, in any way, make "software patents" easier to obtain.
In short, everything about this is wrong and the author is ignorant.
Ask the government to terrorize your competitors.
Governments claim to oppose monopolies, yet they are the only way a real monopoly can be achieved.
The software world has been going so well with open source and lack of suffocation by government.
This is a major blow to improvements in the field.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
Apple can start suing Samsung again for something Apple stole years a go from other non US companies
Correct, and furthermore, the entire purpose of patents is to teach others your inventive ideas to further technical advancement.
That is the purported purpose of patents. It is not in practice the actual purpose of them as things stand today. The de-facto purpose of patents is to protect the profits of the company holding the patent. It's fairly rare that patents today ever describe something that would be unknown otherwise to practitioners in the field. This is not to say patents are pointless/useless but they certainly have been co-opted and are in need of reform.
The suggestion that patents lack "faIr use" is absurd.
This is by and large correct. If I copy someone's patented widget in my own garage for my own use, nobody is going to give a shit. Companies only care about patents to the extent they can either profit from them or protect their profits with them.
Copyrights and patents do not overlap and serve different purposes.
The very fact that software can be both copyrighted and patented shows your argument to be incorrect as a practical matter. Furthermore the core purpose of both is to address the free rider problem. Copyright deals with it for documented creative works and patents are supposed to deal with it for tangible practical inventions but they are solving the same problem in two different domains with different practical requirements.
The existence of copyright does not mean that patents don't apply to software.
Obviously but one can make a very reasonable argument that because software is copyrighted, patents should not and need not apply to software. Software at its core is nothing more than a fancy math formula. It's instructions to a machine. I have yet to see any credible argument detailing how society benefits if we should allow patents on mathematical formulas or any other intangible idea like a business process.
No, you lie. There are a few republicans in cabinet positions, and a few political appointees in senior positions who weren't openly hateful to half the population, but make no mistake that federal government employees are almost exclusively Yellow Dog Democrats.
"proposed new rules that would make it easier to patent software."
It's worth noting that these are not "new rules." Instead, it's just a memo that attempts to summarize existing law. The memo doesn't change anything re the patentability of software.
While they do overlap, GP is right that they serve different purposes.
Of course copyright and patents do have different intents and apply to very different sorts of works. But it does not follow that some works could not be in principle covered by both.
And if machines are patentable, why shouldn't a process using those machines be patentable?
To answer that question you have to answer what the harm versus benefit to society is from allowing them or not. It's a reasonable question to ask. Speaking broadly I would argue that there are several reasons to not allow them:
1) The free rider problem does not cause sufficient economic harm to justify allowing them (this is the biggest reason)
2) Practical difficulty that these sorts of patents tend to too broad in scope due to difficulty in description.
3) No compelling value proposition to the public in allowing process patents
4) If the object being made with the process is patented then there is no need to patent the process
I would argue that item 1 alone is sufficient. There is just no compelling evidence that economic harm to society will result if we don't allow process or software patents.
Or, looked at another way, any software can be implemented in hardware elements (FPGAs, ASICs, etc.). Why should one implementation be patentable while another is not?
Because the hardware implementations are invariably more than just software in a crunchy shell. That said it's a reasonable question. My take on it is that the hardware could be patented if it involves sufficiently novel physics but the code should be adequately covered by copyright. Words on a page versus words on a monitor are still words. The exact medium the come on is (or should be) irrelevant for copyright purposes.
I don't disagree, but you're ignoring the nationwide reach of the patent system and the negative effects of uncertainty. Least of all, this would turn TC Heartland into a monster.
If you can shoot a man in Reno but not Orlando, that's fine by comparison- that act had to happen in a particular place and everybody knows what the situation is at the time and place where it occurs. You can't shoot a man in Reno from your regular place of business in Orlando, but you sure as hell can produce an infringing piece of software that gets used in Reno.
Hope all those coders who lost their jobs because no one is incentivized to write software anymore get rehired.