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posted by janrinok on Tuesday October 04 2016, @01:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the step-in-the-right-direction dept.

Roy Schestowitz at TechRights reports

Further reinforcing the current trend, software patents' demise in the United States has just been ascertained again.

[...] The latest decision[PDF] [...] from the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) is eye-catching, but either it hasn't caught the eye of legal firms or they're just trying to ignore it, so we'll be covering it more than we usually cover such decisions.

[...] The ruling is very important because it serves to demonstrate a loss for patent trolls and for software patents (or patent trolls that use software patents, which is typical). The decision criticises patent trolling as well.

[...] So far, based on our research, only one press article has been published about this decision. It's titled "Here's Why Software Patents Are in Peril After the Intellectual Ventures Ruling".

The end may be in sight for software patents--which have long been highly controversial in the tech industry--in the wake of a remarkable appeals court ruling that described such patents as a "deadweight loss on the nation's economy" and a threat to the First Amendment's free speech protections.

The ruling, issued on Friday [September 30] by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, found that three patents asserted against anti-virus companies Symantec [...] and Trend Micro were invalid because they did not describe a patentable invention. The patents were owned by Intellectual Ventures, which has a notorious reputation in the tech world as a so-called "patent troll", a phrase that describes firms that buy up old patents and wage lawsuits in order to demand payments from productive companies.

Software Patents as a Threat to Free Speech

Friday's ruling is also significant because Judge [Haldane Robert] Mayer eschews the insider baseball language that typically dominates patent law, and addresses patents in the broader context of technology and government monopolies.

Pointing out that intellectual property monopolies can limit free speech, Mayer notes that copyright law has built-in First Amendment protections such as "fair use" and that patent law must include similar safeguards. He suggests that the safeguard comes in the form of a part of the Patent Act, known as "Section 101", which says some things--including abstract ideas--simply can't be patented in the first place.


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 04 2016, @08:01PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 04 2016, @08:01PM (#410269)

    Microsoft Office

    I like the example of "spreadsheet" better.
    Those existed before computers.
    Now, they were extremely cumbersome to do by hand and a computer made them infinitely easier BUT THEY WEREN'T NEW.

    "With a computer" doesn't make something old into something new.
    Pretty much **anybody** who had used a computer and had used a spreadsheet would know that combining the 2 is a logical thing to do.

    Making the effort to produce the app is worthy of a **copyright** on that **specific** work product.
    A PATENT would indicate that you came up with a wholly NEW thing--which you clearly didn't.

    .
    Having written software and assembled pre-fab furniture

    You've distorted what I said.
    The point is that one is a set of instructions for a -human- to follow and the other is a set of instructions for a -machine- to follow.
    This is sometimes referred to as "a distinction without a difference".
    Again, "with a computer" doesn't make something old into something new.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

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