Affirmance

Affirmance

For example, Red Hat and IEEE-USA both called for affirmance, but one asked the court to clarify that software was never patentable, and the other asked for the opposite.

Yes, two parties can ask for affirmance and still have desires and concerns about what else should or might happen.

I said that what Red Hat asked for (affirmance) wasn't enough to do away with software patents, but affirmance would have been a step in a restrictive direction. The IEEE obviously didn't want things to be any more restrictive, and Red Hat would have liked them to be even more restrictive. Since the Court, however, walked in the very opposite direction as that desired by Red Hat, it's fair to say Red Hat failed to get what it wanted. It wanted at least affirmance, ideally something more restrictive; there was no affirmance but instead a clearly less restrictive line.

As I see it, at worst it will be unproductive, in which case their effectiveness only as low as the many who didn't submit any response - nothing to criticise.

You quoted only the "Anything less" sentence. But "less" is always relative to something, so here's my statement again: "You need a strong base of significant companies with R&D-centric business models (not mere monetizers) to ask lawmakers to act. Anything less will be unproductive at best, or counterproductive at worst. Or just a PR stunt, like in this case." So "anything less" related to the whole thing, including what kinds of companies you need and what they should do. By "counterproductive" I mean the impression it can make in the political arena, not in terms of what the USPTO will establish as guidelines. In terms of the USPTO's guidelines, it will just be "unproductive". I looked at it in terms of what would have to happen to bring about change.