Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
When it comes to software patents, the US is no longer the place to be. China might be it and as the EPO mimics China — as disturbing as that may be also in the human rights aspect — patent law firms now openly say that it's easier to get (and/or defend) software patents in Europe than it is in the US.
Over the past 3 years we have been writing a lot about Alice — the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decision that ended a lot of software patents in the US. For software patents to withstand a court's scrutiny (the higher, the harder) has become the exception rather than the norm. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) has just reaffirmed this position (late on Friday). There is still no sign — however remote — that SCOTUS will revisit a case like Alice, but sites like Watchtroll work hard lobbying for such a thing to happen. We last gave an example of that approximately one week ago. Just escalated up to SCOTUS were a bunch of cases that involve no software patents at all; there was also Sandoz v Amgen.
Source: http://techrights.org/2017/04/30/not-overturning-alice/
[Ed. Note: The Alice decision referred to is Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International. See also: A non-paywalled article about Sandoz v. Amgen.]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday May 04 2017, @05:47PM
That whole quoted section is pretty horrible writing.