Red Hat failed to achieve the Supreme Court decision it wanted [LWN.net]

Red Hat failed to achieve the Supreme Court decision it wanted

Posted Sep 29, 2010 19:21 UTC (Wed) by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
In reply to: Red Hat failed to achieve the Supreme Court decision it wanted by FlorianMueller
Parent article: Red Hat Responds to U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Request for Guidance on Bilski

Oh, I twice typed "it's" where it should have been "its" ;-) But in terms of logic I stand by what I wrote.

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Red Hat failed to achieve the Supreme Court decision it wanted

Posted Sep 29, 2010 20:34 UTC (Wed) by kunitz (subscriber, #3965) [Link] (1 responses)

It appears that the news item on the Red Hat website contains the actual comments submitted to the PTO. If I understand the comments correctly Red Hat maintains that software is a set of algorithms and as such alone not patentable.

Red Hat failed to achieve the Supreme Court decision it wanted

Posted Sep 30, 2010 3:12 UTC (Thu) by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048) [Link]

It appears that the news item on the Red Hat website contains the actual comments submitted to the PTO.

Those few paragraphs are so unspecific that I assumed they sent something more elaborate to the USPTO, with more specific references and examples. If really all they submitted was just those few paragraphs, then that only adds to the impression of a PR stunt without any legal substance.

If I understand the comments correctly Red Hat maintains that software is a set of algorithms and as such alone not patentable.

No patent attorney in his right mind will file a patent application that looks like a patent on an algorithm alone, even if the ultimate legal effect of the patent being granted will be the monopolization of the algorithm.

The questions that have to be addressed -- and the tests that have to be performed -- under substantive patent law follow a very special logic in order to assess the nature of a claimed invention.

Grammar Nazi ahoy.

Posted Sep 30, 2010 0:02 UTC (Thu) by kena (subscriber, #2735) [Link] (2 responses)

That, and you wrote "stupidly-drafted". It's recently come to my attention that thousands of hyphens have been misused and abused by my very fingers -- apparently, adverbs don't get hyphens, because they're implicitly modifying the word that follows, and therefore don't need the explicit tying that a hyphen offers.

Which means I only did it incorrectly for some 35 years. I might be able to reach break-even...

Grammar Nazi ahoy.

Posted Sep 30, 2010 12:38 UTC (Thu) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

Due to certain aspects of the volatility of English grammar, I tend to the position that explicit hyphen-binding of adverbs is a good idea.

Grammar Nazi ahoy.

Posted Sep 30, 2010 20:24 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

On a somewhat unrelated not (since this thread is already off-topic), in Russian language we have an opposite situation.

I.e. too _few_ hyphens in phrases borrowed from English. For example, "Internet server" in Russian should be written as "Internet-server" (so naturally a lot of people write it incorrectly without a hyphen).

So I guess it's better to fix English to require hyphens everywhere, right?