Um, no. [LWN.net]

Um, no.

Posted Oct 30, 2008 23:03 UTC (Thu) by dwheeler (guest, #1216)
Parent article: Court Greatly Limits Software And Business Method Patents (Techdirt)

I don't think that's true at all. In the Bilski case, even the Patent Office agrees that it shouldn't be patented - and the patent office gleefully grants patents that "obviously" shouldn't be granted (well, obvious to most software developers anyway). The patent office was happy to grant display XORing, the setuid bit, and other nonsense. In fact, this whole case shows that the patent office is having trouble figuring out how to say 'no'. It seems to say 'yes' so often that it's having trouble justifying ANY limits on patentability that is consistent and justifiable.

This ruling states a few trivial limits, but I suspect that they will be easily subverted. "Transforms an article into a different state or thing"? ANY process produces SOME different "state or thing", so people will work hard to drive through that loophole.

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Um, no.

Posted Oct 31, 2008 14:53 UTC (Fri) by AJWM (guest, #15888) [Link]

The setuid bit patent, one of the earliest "software" patents, was interesting in that it explained ("taught", in patentese) the invention entirely in hardware terms -- i.e., you could build a circuit to implement the setuid function -- thus making it a machine patent.

In any event, Bell Labs released that patent to the public domain.

Um, no.

Posted Oct 31, 2008 16:56 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

It seems to say 'yes' so often that it's having trouble justifying ANY limits on patentability that is consistent and justifiable.

The problem is that the patent office is funded on the basis of patents that are granted, not patent applications that are refused. Besides, granting lots of patents makes companies look very innovative, and the patent office look very busy, which is also a good thing. There is no pressure whatsoever on patent agents to refuse anything but the most obviously rubbish patents (like, for example, perpetual motion machines - and some of those still get through), so the tendency is to accept pretty much everything and let the courts sort things out later.