Court Puts Further Limits on Software Patents

An anonymous reader writes "The Wall Street Journal is reporting on a recent court ruling that may severely limit the scope of both software and business model patents. The court found that 'The routine addition of modern electronics to an otherwise unpatentable invention' isn't enough to get over the 'non-obvious' hurdle that every patent is supposed to clear. This is a huge step in the right direction and one of the first admissions from the court system that perhaps software and business model patents have gone too far. 'In August, the Federal Circuit in essence raised the bar for proving willful infringement, a finding that allows a judge to triple a damage award. In April, the Supreme Court handed down a patent decision making it easier for trial-court judges to call an invention "obvious" and therefore ineligible for a patent.'"

One Click

[by Anonymous Coward]

There goes the One Click patent. And to think it was only good for a 10 year head start.

This move should also kill a whole bunch of the "... on the internet." patents off.

Common Sense Wins?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for using your common sense to defeat the enemies of innovation.

Three cheers for the independent judiciary.

Modern?

[Aladrin (926209)]

What about the adding of old or futuristic electronics? Why is that not covered?

Professor X invents a Frammwizle. Patent Troll Y see that a Frammwizle can make many other past inventions more useful, and simply patents the use of the 2 together, just like is current dont with the Internet.

Since it's already happened, and this is meant to address that very situation, why should 'modern' be there at all?

Re:Modern?

[geekoid (135745)]

Taking two devices to make an improved, or different device is perfectly valid.

The internet is not a device.

Re:

[debilo (612116)]

The internet is not a device.

Outrageous! Anything that keeps Slashdotters happy on a cold, lonely night is a 'device' in my book.

Re:Modern?

[russotto (537200)]

Taking two devices to make an improved, or different device is perfectly valid.

Yeah, but a new patent for using a hammer to drive a nail every time someone comes out with a new hammer or a new nail is not valid.

obvious

[User 956 (568564)]

In April, the Supreme Court handed down a patent decision making it easier for trial-court judges to call an invention "obvious" and therefore ineligible for a patent.

Did this patent decision also make it easier for them to call an invention +5 insightful?

Can someone please explain why

[zappepcs (820751)]

The court found that 'The routine addition of modern electronics to an otherwise unpatentable invention' isn't enough to get over the 'non-obvious' hurdle that every patent is supposed to clear. This is a huge step in the right direction ......

Can someone please explain why NTP has a patent on sending e-mail to wireless devices? Looks like we have an opening to go back and invalidate quite a number of patents.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Yeah and who will be liable for RIM and NTP losses. To me it looks like the USPTO acted fraudulently in taking money to grant such a patent. I hope NTP legal advisers also have good liability insurance.

What's the difference between the USPTO selling void patents and a conman selling famous landmarks? Is it a case on caveat emptor or would the con artist be prosecuted?

Re:Can someone please explain why

[Ungrounded Lightning (62228)]

Technically NTP's patents are not for sending wireless email... rather, the patents are more about the "push" technology that is used.

How is their patented "push technology" different from, say, someone with a linux based phone running a stock mail transfer agent (such as sendmail or its successors) on the phone, with his ISP's MTA programmed to forward his mail to his own MTA in the normal fashion, and BIFF (or one of its successors) set up to beep at him when new mail arrives? This is a straightforward configuration of standard components. If you want to be able to read your email when out of range of the cell network it's the obvious way to configure it. No "invention" required.

I have a site, for instance, that receives mail by periodic polling of the ISP using UUCP-over-IP with dialup UUCP backup. If I were to move it to a linux phone - or clone the configuration - and switch the initiation of scheduled UUCP polling from my side to the ISP's side, I'd have one form of what I described in the paragraph above. It would be a typical mail configuration from the earliest days of UUCP-internet mail bridging. The sole change would be that the user's terminal happens to be a cellphone and the dialup polling happens to be by "radio phone" rather than landline.

Similarly if the cloned configuration accepted mail forwarded via SMTP, with the ISP's mail servers as some of the MX record entries (or the only ones), so inbound mail has somewhere to go when the phone itself isn't present on the net.

A step in the right direction.

[rizzo320 (911761)]

The system is still a mess, but at least this is a step in the right direction. Hopefully, in the future, there will be some legislation (taking a hint from these court decisions) involved where clear, up to date, policies are defined, resulting in less of these software patent lawsuits in our court system.

Stupid Patents

[sconeu (64226)]

This is a huge step in the right direction

IsNot (patent pending)!!!!!

That may explain IBM's new position

[IndustrialComplex (975015)]

This ruling may have been a catalyst for IBM's new position and backtracking on their 'outsourcing' patent. http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/?p=1869 [sutor.com] (posted on Slashdot just a few hours ago http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/05/0449218 [slashdot.org])

From Sutor's blog IBM adopted a new policy a year ago to sharply reduce business method patent filings and instead stress significant technical content in its patents.

Does this make IBM's new policy seem a bit less altruistic?

This doesn't touch software, just obviousness

[postbigbang (761081)]

If you RTFA, the litigation was over a business-process that was deemed to be more about thought than process, and therefore not covered.

Although many software patents might be obvious, and pass the Supreme Court test, there are no really good precedents - yet - that cover software patent obviousness, saving the ongoing one-click litigation.

Not as nice or as pertinent as some would like, but I'll take it.

The summary reminded me of my days at Nokia

[blind biker (1066130)]

We had a competence transfer about patents and IP, and as the tutors were explaining what can be patented, the techies in the audience (me included) would exclaim, from time to time "what, you can patent that?" We were just so surprised that you don't need to come up with something original or complicated, not even the software algorithm. I had the impression as if we were almost encouraged to patent the most broad possible vaggueties - the word "idea" only barely applies.

I'm sure other companies do exactly the same.

Re:

[Belacgod (1103921)]

No patents without implementation! That's one essential reform.

Re:The summary reminded me of my days at Nokia

[moderatorrater (1095745)]

Let them get the patent before implementing the idea, but don't let them enforce it until they've implemented it (if it really was an original idea, they should be able to implement it quickly enough to enforce it, right?)

Re:

[BillyBlaze (746775)]

The original US patent system required sending a working model of the (physical) invention to the patent office.

So Keith Henson loses his "satellite launch whip"?

[Ungrounded Lightning (62228)]

No patents without implementation! That's one essential reform.

So you'd deny Keith Henson his satellite launching whip patent [google.com] - just because he can't afford to buy a 747, modify it to attach the tow cable, and do aerobatics with it until he gets a payload out of the atmosphere?

Re:

[Belacgod (1103921)]

Aren't they nowadays being crushed by large companies with extensive sets of overbroad patents? I don't see how this would make things worse.

What this says

[WPIDalamar (122110)]

The test-case in the article was completely uninteresting to most of us. It was a further comment in the ruling that is "the routine addition of modern electronics to an otherwise unpatentable invention"

What this really is saying is...

If an idea isn't patentable on it's own, then simply doing it with a computer isn't enough to make it patentable.

So if an idea such as "Tell something to somebody using piglatin" isn't patentable, then "Tell something to somebody using piglatin on a computer" or "Tell something to somebody using piglatin on a PDA" is not patentable either.

It could really limit the "dumb" patents.

Re:

[IndustrialComplex (975015)]

I've got the points, but I already posted. But I think you did provide a good analogy in your post.

I wonder how this would affect Vonage's patent woes.

Misleading headline

[pieterh (196118)]

This is most definitely not about software patents, it is about business method patents. This has no effect on software patents at all. It simply stops the patenting of mental processes that are vaguely assisted by technology. You can be certain that software patents - on designs, algorithms, procedures, whatever - are as strong before as after this ruling.

Am I the only one that finds it deeply ironic that this ruling came because an "inventor" (patent jargon for 'lawyer') tried to patent something that would affect other lawyers? The CAFC does not care a jot about engineers, programmers, designers. But it does really care about inventors, sorry, lawyers.

This is nothing new at all

[CaptainPatent (1087643)]

Automation of a manual process has been unpatentable for quite a time now, this is just a court decision upholding what was already known. For those of you that don't have an MPEP handy, this is an excerpt dealing exactly with that:

2144.04[R-1]III. AUTOMATING A MANUAL ACTIVITY
In re Venner, 262 F.2d 91, 95, 120 USPQ 193, 194 (CCPA 1958) (Appellant argued that claims to a permanent mold casting apparatus for molding trunk pistons were allowable over the prior art because the claimed invention combined "old permanent- mold structures together with a timer and solenoid which automatically actuates the known pressure valve system to release the inner core after a predetermined time has elapsed." The court held that broadly providing an automatic or mechanical means to replace a manual activity which accomplished the same result is not sufficient to distinguish over the prior art.).

While this case is a little outdated, they're saying that the process would occur manually and all the timer / solenoid combination is doing is automating the formerly manual process. This is expanded to include thought processes too. While it's probably good to have a more recent case back up a good decision made years ago, it won't change patent law any.

Hold it...

[idontgno (624372)]

Hold it hold it hold it...

The latest ruling came in a case arising from a patent application by Stephen Comiskey, a lawyer who wanted to create a system for "mandatory arbitration involving legal documents," such as wills or contracts. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office denied Mr. Comiskey's patent application, as did the agency's board of appeals. Mr. Comiskey took his appeal to court.

Did this guy try to patent lawsuits?

Wow. That takes huge brass ones.

Frankly, I wonder if Mr. Comiskey shouldn't be more worried about his patent being invalidated by the huge body of prior art on Slashdot, every time a patent subject comes up and some bright bulb attempts to create a joke metapatent or something.