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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: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday October 04 2016, @10:28PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 04 2016, @10:28PM (#410376) Journal

    While what you say is true, it's not really relevant. The news are given special mention in the first amendment because they are supposed to report important news, not because they are supposed to report what people want to hear. The protection of entertainment news is a by-product of not being able to define what is important ahead of time.

    OTOH, given the way that the interpretation of the second amendment has been distorted I'm just as glad they didn't try to specify the reasons for protecting free speech.

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  • (Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Thursday October 06 2016, @06:40AM

    by q.kontinuum (532) on Thursday October 06 2016, @06:40AM (#410991) Journal

    What are you, communist or something? This is capitalism, news is what people either pay for to hear or other people pay for to propagate! If it neither sells nor is paid propaganda, it's not legitimate news. (Well, and this is why I find "communist" not such a blatant insult. I'd wish for a mix, if there was such a thing as non-corrupt, competent politicians)

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