Appeals Court Makes It Easier To Dump Software Patents

An anonymous reader writes "While software patents are still legal, it appears that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, sometimes known as the nation's 'patent court' has just made a decision that will make it much easier to reject software patents for being mere 'mental processes'" rather than an actual invention. This could allow the Patent Office and the courts to reject many software patents."

Fixing the symptom

[afidel]

Isn't this trying to fix a broken process by fixing the symptom rather than the cause of the problem? I mean wasn't it just this week that we noticed that the last million patents were granted in 5 years versus the 80 it took for the first million? There's not that much more innovation going on today, we just have more patent abuse going on. Perhaps we need to have a higher fee for patents held by someone other than that original assignees, say $5k per year, this way small inventors don't get hosed, corporations are more willing to give up unneeded patents and will file fewer applications, and the patent office will have more funds to properly vet applications instead of throwing up their hands and rubber stamping everything and letting the courts sort it out.

Irrational ruling

[macraig]

Too bad the submitter didn't read the ARSTechnica article [arstechnica.com] about the same ruling; it was a more impartial analysis and demonstrated how, even though the ruling appears to favor the ultimate abolition of software patents, it's such an illogical ruling that it probably won't really help to serve that purpose, other than perhaps persuading other courts to think more critically about software patents. "Unless it's too complicated for a human to do the math"? Good grief.