Festo And Patent Scope

GoBears writes: "during the bountyquest payout thread, werdna referred to the recent Festo decision by the U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. now, EETimes has an article that talks about the possible implications of this decision (if it is upheld)."

this is the sort of...

[fatmantis]

this is the sort of story momocrome would post to geekizoid [geekizoid.org]. good job, michael.

Look out, RAMBUS!

[overshoot]

If I read this correctly, it specifically spikes the kind of claim expansion that Rambus pulled to make their 1990 patent cover the technology that was being developed in 1993-1994.

This kind of "submarine patent" has been abused massively, and was only partly addressed by the recent 20-year-after-first-file change.

Good or bad?

[L-Train8]

The article kinda lacked details on the court ruling, but I guess that's not surprising since it was 150 pages and confusing to most patent attorneys.

From the articles comments, however, it looks like this is good: stronger requirements for prior art searches and restrictions against overly broad patents. The article makes it sound like this is bad because it makes the patent process more expensive for small businesses. But after the excesses we've been seeing, a change of tide is certainly welcome.