

Court Ruling Opens The Door To Rejecting Many Software Patents - dean
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110817/03120415557/court-ruling-opens-door-to-rejecting-many-software-patents-as-being-mere-mental-processes.shtml

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brlewis
Quote: _the Supreme Court ruled very narrowly in the Bilski case, without
making any explicit statement (as precedent) on overall software or business
model patents_

I really don't get why so many people say this. The Court ruled narrowly on
the particular question before them, but they were 9-0 on what software patent
opponents care about. They all, majority and dissent, said not to use State
Street as precedent. Further, the majority affirmed the Federal Circuit
opinion that said to ignore their earlier State Street and Alappat opinions.

We're back to Benson, Flook, and Diehr. Any patent where the novelty and non-
obviousness is entirely contained in software should be invalid right now. Why
is this not recognized?

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Daniel_Newby
_Any patent where the novelty and non-obviousness is entirely contained in
software should be invalid right now. Why is this not recognized?_

Because the decisions appear to be extremely incoherent.

Firstly, software is a type of hardware. Any computer algorithm can be forged
in steel and powered by a steam engine.

Secondly, their definition of "abstract" does not pass the giggle test. If the
claimed process is practical for a human to do, it is "abstract" and hence
unpatentable. So we get the ludicrous argument that the math of BCD
calculations is "abstract" while GPS signal analysis equations are concrete.
Say what?!

Thirdly, even if we grant them the laughable practicality test, how is fraud-
screening millions of transactions a day practical for a human?

Basically, the practicality standard seems to be if it makes the judge's eyes
glaze over, it's impractical. In other words, if you can spoon-feed the
invention to the judge and he gets it, then the innovation is purely
cognitive. And unpatentable.

But if he chokes on the ideas, the innovation is a patentable _deus ex
machina_. This absurdity is underlined by the _Research Corp. Techs. v.
Microsoft Corp._ case discussed in the ruling. The invention relies on
extremely abstract processing of the dithering signal in the frequency domain.
Judges do not understand the Fourier transform--hell, they aren't even aware
of its existence--so the invention is patentable.

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tzs
Coverage from a better site: [http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2011/08/if-the-
software-meth...](http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2011/08/if-the-software-
method-is-not-patentable-then-neither-is-the-computer-readable-medium.html)

