Subtle Change in Patent Case Law

An Anonymous Coward sends us this: "A friend sent me this link on Yahoo to a somewhat obscure court ruling which may have important consequences for patents, reverse engineering, and the like. I'm not a lawyer so I can't really assess the full impact of this ruling, but my friend (who is a law student) claims that it is a fairly big deal in the intellectual property realm." The article does a good job of explaining.

My New Patent

[HiNote]

In an effort to to avoid a lawsuit from amazon.com, I am implementing a new form of on-line shopping which I call "1.1 click shopping." With the new method, 90% of the time one simple click will purchase the item. The other 10% of the time, the purchase will requre two clicks. 11 clicks per 10 items bought results in an average of 1.1 clicks per item, and hence the name of the new method. If you are interested in licensing this revolutionary new technology from me, please signal your interest by walking down Main Street wearing a shirt that reads "I am a moron," and I'll get a hold of you.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Sounds like a good decision...

[StevenMaurer]

Of course nobody is going to read this, since typical slashdot kiddies just look at the most recent articles, but anyway...

This is a good decision. It gives a little teeth back into the examination process, which relatively recently has been eroded to the point of a joke. Now, at least, if you submit a patent that the examiner initially rejects because it is overly broad, that initial decision will stick - even if you subsequently narrow the scope to get the application approved.

Even though I have about a dozen patent and patents pending, I can't help but believe this is a good thing, and will promote innovation. I only hope the Supreme Court doesn't choose to overturn this one.