The death of software patents?
by T. Colin Dodd
From Patent Law Blog (Patently-O)
The Patent and Trademark Office has now made clear that its newly developed position on patentable subject matter will invalidate many and perhaps most software patents, including pioneering patent claims to such innovators as Google, Inc.
In a series of cases including In re Nuijten, In re Comiskey and In re Bilski, the Patent and Trademark Office has argued in favor of imposing new restrictions on the scope of patentable subject matter set forth by Congress in § 101 of the Patent Act. In the most recent of these three—the currently pending en banc Bilski appeal—the Office takes the position that process inventions generally are unpatentable unless they “result in a physical transformation of an article” or are “tied to a particular machine.”[1] Perhaps, the agency has conceded, some “new, unforeseen technology” might warrant an “exception” to this formalistic test, but in the agency’s view, no such technology has yet emerged so there is no reason currently to use a more inclusive standard.[2]
July 24th, 2008 at 10:44 am
I think that patents in the field of software need to be restricted, if not abolished. Very few (if any) patents are
filed in a way that allows a free market. Most are simply traps for competitors. At the very least, the lifespan of a patent should be made shorter (the technology will probably be obsolete before the patent expires).