The Supreme Court Doesn't Understand Software

An anonymous reader writes We had some good news yesterday when the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated a software patent for failing to turn an idea into an invention. Unfortunately, the justices weren't willing to make any broader statements about the patentability of basic software tools, so the patent fights will continue. Timothy B. Lee at Vox argues that this is because the Supreme Court does not understand software, and says we won't see significant reform until they do.

He says, "If a sequence of conventional mathematical operations isn't patentable, then no software should enjoy patent protection. For example, the 'data compression' patents that Justice Kennedy wants to preserve simply claim formulas for converting information from one digital format to another. If that's not a mathematical algorithm, nothing is. This is the fundamental confusion at the heart of America's software patent jurisprudence: many judges seem to believe that mathematical algorithms shouldn't be patented but that certain kinds of software should be patentable. ... If a patent claims a mathematical formula simple enough for a judge to understand how it works, she is likely to recognize that the patent claims a mathematical formula and invalidate it. But if the formula is too complex for her to understand, then she concludes that it's something more than a mathematical algorithm and uphold it."

Re:Why not patent compression algorithm?

[galabar]

Patents are not granted for the benefit of a few. They are granted because: The Congress shall have power ... To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries; Having said that, I agree that the question should be "why should they be able to patent it."

Re:Why not patent compression algorithm?

[zippthorne]

The point of patents isn't to reward them for inventing a new compression algorithm. They can do that by selling their compression software and keeping the algorithm secret (if they can keep it secret)

The point is to reward them for telling the world how it works, so others can, eventually, use the same algorithm in their own inventions, or learn about compression and create a better one (which they may or may not patent and then the rest of us benefit from that as well)

those ARE a problem. Mechanisms, not results

[raymorris]

Certainly those types of patents are bad, and potentially invalid. The scenario you described, where someone attempts to patent result rather than the mechanism is invalid and should be held invalid. Note that this is true whether the mechanism uses gears to perform multiplication or transistors. That problem is completely separate from and unrelated to software or math. It's a bad patent because there's no invention, just a goal or result.

I don't know that anyone has done an analysis to see whether or not more invalid "result" patents have been issued for bit-based "inventions" than molecule-based inventions. Whether the mechanism is made of wood or of bits, I know patents that are too broad have been issued in both.

Of course it's conceivable that some patent examiners could have had trouble distinguishing between the result of a software mechanism (find quality web pages) and a particular mechanism for doing so (PageRank). "High quality" web pages could be determined by any number of mechanisms and PageRank is just one of many different mechanisms that might be invented.