Supreme Court Says Patents Cover 'Abstract Ideas' Are Invalid

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The Supreme Court says software patents covering abstract ideas are invalid. :eek: Thanks to Nephtis for the link.

Software patents aren't dead, but they just took a blow. In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court has ruled that a series of banking patents didn't cover a concrete software process but an abstract idea, throwing them out and potentially setting a stricter precedent for future patents.
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Not proactive, though?

This is good news all the same. About time they are getting some common sense.
 
Ur_Mom said:
Not proactive, though?

This is good news all the same. About time they are getting some common sense.
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It doesn't have to be. Like patents are now unenforceable though that won't initially stop the court cases.
 
Hopefully this can be used as a stepping stone to kill other classes of software patents.
 
The abstract will become crystal clear once the briefcases of money come out.
 
Unfortunately this is likely part of a bent that is being taken to allow large companies to take the ideas of small/individual inventors. They don't have the resources to develop and document all possible implementations of an idea.
 
jpm100 said:
Unfortunately this is likely part of a bent that is being taken to allow large companies to take the ideas of small/individual inventors. They don't have the resources to develop and document all possible implementations of an idea.
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Wouldn't doubt it. The last few decades has seen patents become very unfriendly to garage inventors because of the rise of costs. It stifles innovation because you have to practically remortgage the house to get a patent app filed. That's a heavy risk.
 
So does that mean that MMO patent is no longer valid? IIRC, that was pretty fuckin' abstract.
 
So as a bit of clarification, abstract ideas and laws of nature have always been ineligible subject matter for patents. I can't patent the idea of using water/air power, nor could I patent a mathematical formula.

The argument here was that the application of ineligible subject matter through computer software was somehow different/patentable. The Supreme Court said no, if the underlying invention is unpatentable, then you can't just wrap it up in software and patent it. Here's one of Alice's patents - check out claim 1:
http://www.google.com/patents/US7149720

As you can see, it's incredibly broad. No way that would stand on its own. Today's opinion says it can't be saved by adding another step that says "do this in a computer."

Yes, as someone else pointed out above, every idea can be peeled back to abstraction if you look hard enough. The opinion talks at great length about this "inventive step" that is needed to take something from an abstract idea an into "real invention" territory.
 
Terrible news. I hope this doesn't carry over to hardware and my rounded corner patent gets thrown out.
 
jpm100 said:
They don't have the resources to develop and document all possible implementations of an idea.
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No one has the resources to develop and document all possible implementations of an idea.

This has nothing to do with small businesses and everything to do with stopping the patent trolls who do nothing but use the court system as a means of extortion.
 
I wonder if this will help Adam Carolla in his fight against the trolls that claim the patent on podcasting. Seems promising.
 
mesyn191 said:
No one has the resources to develop and document all possible implementations of an idea.

This has nothing to do with small businesses and everything to do with stopping the patent trolls who do nothing but use the court system as a means of extortion.
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I don't think it does. Many large business were involved in this decision in some way.

The Wikipedia page for it is really good.

My overall problem with this is that it seems to me that the courts decide these things based on the size of the company versus applying their ruling consistently. For example we know a certain company has patented a rectangle. A patent for a natural if not obvious shape for a tablet. You can't really even call it an abstract idea that's never been done before. But it still stands today. Why?
 
kac77 said:
Many large business were involved in this decision in some way.
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That doesn't matter. What does is that the SCOTUS's decision doesn't discriminate against a business or legal patent holding entity based on the size of that entity or business. Its a decision against patents that add a 'do it on a computer' as the next 'step' in their implementation. That is it.

kac77 said:
My overall problem with this is that it seems to me that the courts decide these things based on the size of the company versus applying their ruling consistently.
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Can you quote the section of the decision that singles out or gives instructions for handling patents from larger sized companies or entities in another manner from smaller ones?

kac77 said:
For example we know a certain company has patented a rectangle. A patent for a natural if not obvious shape for a tablet. You can't really even call it an abstract idea that's never been done before. But it still stands today. Why?
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I'm not seeing a connection between your example of a patent on the shape of a tablet and the idea that the courts rule based on company size. Can you spell it out a little more clearly?

As for why the patent still stands for now I believe it has to be challenged in court first or invalidated by the USPTO after they have reconsidered its validity in light of the SCOTUS's new and recent ruling.

The USPTO and US patent system has a lot of problems that won't be fixed by one court ruling unfortunately.
 
Knight_of_BAAWA said:
If only they could kill the entire idea of patent and copyright. But this is a start.
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Then what would be the incentive to create anything?

Personally, I think patents should apply to physical/tangible things only. Concerning broadness of patents, a pharmaceutical company would never be granted a patent for method of relieving pain by oral ingestion. The patent office would only allow their specific formula to be patented. Yet on software patents, they do allow such broadness. Basic example is company A invents 10+10=20 and patents it. Company B invents 4*5=20. Company C invents 5^2-5=20. Company D invents sqrt(2500)/2=20 Despite the fact that they all use a different architucture, method of operation and processing, the fact that they produce the same output is why it would be an infringement of Company A's patent.

That is the major flaw in the software patent system
 
ALL SOFTWARE PATENTS ARE OBVIOUS UNDER THE ART and are therefore INVALID.

The rest is just bullshit.

Now Algorithms, such as Google Search algorithm,s etc are patentable processes.... and can be done by hand not just by computer. Any SOFTWARE implementing the algorithm is in fact OBVIOUS under the art .... the art of software engineering.

At some point all this software patenting shit needs to be voided entirely.

You can patent an encryption algorithm, but not any software implementing it. You can COPYRIGHT a specific piece of software implementing it, but not ALL software implementing it, because the IMPLEMENTING IT is by definition OBVIOUS UNDER THE ART.
 
NeghVar said:
Then what would be the incentive to create anything?
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You could still make a product and sell it for money. You just get less money since you don't get a cut of all the product everyone else copies from you. Even before 'modern' (the idea of a state given temporary monopoly is oooold) patents and its enforcement systems existed it was still quite possible to do that while product piracy was commonplace.

Inventors screamed bloody murder over it of course but the net benefit for society was massive since it was trivial for new ideas to spread and be made useful.

I don't think its told in the common student history books anymore but patent piracy and what would now be called industrial espionage was key to the US building its economy.

“The United States emerged as the world’s industrial leader by illicitly appropriating mechanical and scientific innovations from Europe,” the historian Doron Ben-Atar observes in his book “Trade Secrets.” Throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, American industrial spies roamed the British Isles, seeking not just new machines but skilled workers who could run and maintain those machines. One of these artisans was Samuel Slater, often called “the father of the American industrial revolution.” He emigrated here in 1789, posing as a farmhand and bringing with him an intimate knowledge of the Arkwright spinning frames that had transformed textile production in England, and he set up the first water-powered textile mill in the U.S. Two decades later, the American businessman Francis Cabot Lowell talked his way into a number of British mills, and memorized the plans to the Cartwright power loom. When he returned home, he built his own version of the loom, and became the most successful industrialist of his time.

The American government often encouraged such piracy. Alexander Hamilton, in his 1791 “Report on Manufactures,” called on the country to reward those who brought us “improvements and secrets of extraordinary value” from elsewhere. State governments financed the importation of smuggled machines. And although federal patents were supposed to be granted only to people who came up with original inventions, Ben-Atar shows that, in practice, Americans were receiving patents for technology pirated from abroad.
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We have such a strong patent and copyright system today is because of decades and decades of lobbying and court practices to strengthen them. Of course these patent and copyright holders know no limits to their want of wealth and today the patent and copyright system has been twisted into a parody of itself and even patent lawyers and its enforcement agents are starting to speak out against it and call for major reform.
 
I'm torn over this. Their ruling shows a lack of understanding of what software IS.

Hypothetical: you devise a new 10000000:1 video compression technique using serious Voodoo Mathematics. How do you protect your development?

"The source code is copyrighted" <- the usual answer for folks opposed to software patents. That's great until you get a reverse engineered re-factor from a competitor and now you're fucked. You did the hard work. Your research has led to a revolution in streaming 16K video to the Samsung Galaxy 65S (a 16" phablet phone duct taped to a 12v marine deep cycle lead acid battery. The hipsters love it).

You get none of the rewards because "Dmitry" in Moscow disassembled your stuff, peeled back your obfuscation and re implemented the solution. Sucks to be you.
 
They didn't do away with software patents though.

At all.

They only eliminated one type of frivolous patent troll technique by ruling 'do it on a computer' as a implementation step for a product as too abstract to grant a patent for.

You can still patent your 100000000:1 compression technique if you want.

Of course legal means to reverse engineer and re-implement your compression technique already exist and have been used before to great success.
 
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