TechDirt reports:
The impact of the Supreme Court's ruling in Alice v. CLS Bank continues to reverberate around the industry. We've already noted that courts have been rapidly invalidating a bunch of patents, and that related lawsuits appear to be dropping rapidly as well. And, now, a new analysis from a (pro-patent) law firm suggests that the US Patent Office is rejecting a lot more software patents as well.
Following the ruling, the US Patent Office issued new rules (PDF) for examiners, and even withdrew some notices of allowances. And it appears all of this is having an impact. The link above is Vox summarizing some findings from patent lawyer Kate Gaudry of law firm Kilpatrick Townsend, who argues that the data suggests the USPTO is rejecting software patents at a much higher rate. In short, back in January, art units at the USPTO rejected applications based on Section 101 of US Patent law only about 24% of the time. Section 101 covers what is patent eligible, and was the key part in the decision in the Alice case. Effectively, in the Alice ruling, the Supreme Court said that just doing something on a generic computer wasn't patent eligible under Section 101. Following that ruling, in July, the rejection rate jumped to 78%. Yes, from 24% in January to 78% in June. That's massive. The data also shows that units that focus on "other kinds of technology saw little change in their rejection rates."
(Score: 4, Interesting) by frojack on Saturday October 18 2014, @07:40PM
Alice is the gift that keeps giving. Adding "with a computer" does not make any generic process unique, it simply roadblocks progress.
Its as close as we have come to outlawing the patenting of algorithms, and in fact it is actually better.
Computers were designed to automate monotonous tasks, remove drudge work, free human minds for other tasks. That the Patent Office decided that doing anything with a computer was somehow worth of a patent was the equivalent of patenting EACH use of a Bic Lighter separately simply because a common match was not involved.
Now perhaps we can start pushing to invalidate patents on Actual Algorithms, in music, video, encryption, etc we can get on with progress.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 18 2014, @09:21PM
We're thinking alike.
from the algorithms-aren't-patentable dept. [soylentnews.org]
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 18 2014, @11:49PM
(Score: 1) by tomek on Monday October 20 2014, @09:10AM
Perhaps as the time passes, (some) people with power discover that computers are just tools. With a little luck the mentality of "that nerdy stuff normal people can't possibly be interested in" many people display will be replaced with more common sense and adding the famous "on the computer" phrase won't mean "stuff normal people couldn’t have possibly invented before". Fingers crossed.