
Business Method Patents Limited by U.S. Supreme Court - rglovejoy
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-28/business-method-patents-limited-by-u-s-high-court-update1-.html
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jbooth
Thank you, Microsoft and Google.

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tzs
IBM's amicus brief was interesting. The said "This judicial direction has
resulted in substantial economic, technological, and societal benefit because
software patents promote innovation both within and beyond the field of
software" and had a footnote to elaborate on that point.

The footnote said:

"Without the benefit of patent protection, software companies would be forced
to rely on secrecy which limits the public’s ability to learn from software
innovations, since patent documents are a significant source of technological
disclosure. See, e.g., In re Alappat, 33 F.3d 1526, 1571 (Fed. Cir. 1994)
(Newman, J., concurring). Given the reality that software source code is human
readable, and object code can be reverse engineered, it is difficult for
software developers to resort to secrecy. Thus, without patent protection, the
incentives to innovate in the field of software are significantly reduced.
Patent protection has promoted the free sharing of source code on a patentee’s
terms—which has fueled the explosive growth of open source software
development."

Another interesting brief was the one from the FSF. They spent _13_ _pages_ on
their "Interest of Amicus Curiae" section (where the submitter explains why
they have an interest in the case). That's something like 40% of their brief.

In this 13 pages, they talk about how Linux should be called GNU/Linux, the
1992 US Air Force contract with NYU to produce a GPLed ADA compiler, how RMS
is a genius, and much more. It reads like a press release.

For comparison, most of the rest manage to state their interest in a page or
two, and then get on to their argument.

