SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday October 04 2016, @08:27PM
In the Reverse Engineering situation, this would be when the software does something which gets the reaction "how did they do that?". Rather than, I could build that same thing. Just need to roll up my sleeves and do the work. In other words, implementation is obvious.
The Reverse Engineering situation is what I argue is the rare case. Not worth giving that software patent protection. Not when balanced against the vast majority of cases (like today) where we have ridiculous obvious patents being granted and lawsuits for HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS or even over a BILLION dollars.
Too bad about that rare case. But letting it have a patent means that the entire rest of everyone else, every company, is hindered by in a morass of patent litigation and lawyers. Innovation is slowed down, just so that an occasional software item could get the patent that it might deserve.
I just don't see the patent system ever being truly fixed. And even in some fairytail world where it could be, it wouldn't stay fixed. It would quickly slide back to what we have now, or worse.
Sometimes there is a rare piece of software that deserves a patent. (Although I don't even know of a good example.) But the cost to everyone else for that to happen is just too high.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by SecurityGuy on Tuesday October 04 2016, @08:42PM
I can't really argue with that. Should software be patentable? IMO, yes. Is the current system, specifically that the USPTO grants patents to things they shouldn't, relying on the courts to sort it out, so unworkably broken that the cost of permitting software patents exceeds the benefit of them? Yeah, I'll grant that's possible. I certainly don't have a lot of hope of getting the USPTO to stop issuing bad patents.