one of microsoft's lines of attack against Linux

[Spartacus]

was weakened by the Federal courts when they made business methods non-patentable

There's been lots of commentary that this is a prelude to excluding software from patentability

and looks like the US Supreme Court may not help MS (that circuit decision on the "Bilsky" case was appealed, and was heard 2 days ago at SCotUS)

http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/i...91110120726920

http://news.swpat.org/2009/11/bilski...ng-transcript/

(rants may be a better place for this ... let's see if FRED moves it there)

[MulaMan]

Re: one of microsoft's lines of attack against Linux

This is so anti-American, I have a patent pending on coffee pancakes.

Without the possibility for a patent why would I have put in all the effort to invent them?

[*T*]

Re: one of microsoft's lines of attack against Linux

This is so anti-American, I have a patent pending on coffee pancakes.

Without the possibility for a patent why would I have put in all the effort to invent them?

Maybe because you want coffee pancakes.
I for one would be very happy if software was not patentable.

[Spartacus]

Re: one of microsoft's lines of attack against Linux

Maybe because you want coffee pancakes.
I for one would be very happy if software was not patentable.

MS patents something that's been in continuous use for 29 years on UNIX systems


http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?s...91111094923390

[lurker]

Re: one of microsoft's lines of attack against Linux

IMO the problem is not the patenting of software, but that the patent office allows things to be patented when they should be disqualified either because there is prior art, or because they're f*ck*ng obvious. (So obvious in fact that you would never thing to check for a patent until you receive a nice letter from some hit and run patent attorney).'

If a new piece of software is non-obvious, has no prior art, and provides a genuinely useful service why should it not be subject to the same patent protection as hardware, drugs etc etc ?

[Spartacus]

Re: one of microsoft's lines of attack against Linux

IMO the problem is not the patenting of software, but that the patent office allows things to be patented when they should be disqualified either because there is prior art, or because they're f*ck*ng obvious. (So obvious in fact that you would never thing to check for a patent until you receive a nice letter from some hit and run patent attorney).'

If a new piece of software is non-obvious, has no prior art, and provides a genuinely useful service why should it not be subject to the same patent protection as hardware, drugs etc etc ?

EDIT: i was hoping just to informatively list the arguments, I hope you can read it that way. Obviously my agenda has sneaked in ... hope you are better at extracting the info better than I am at distilling the info.

Just to list a few of the arguments for those who are not familiar with them - I don't know which arguments will win in the end, pro or con, but there have been lots of "no" arguments

"public policy" (a favourite of many courts)

"framers' intent" (which excludes patenting of math, science, music, recipes, and literature)

a form of "double jeopardy" (normally you can't patent what you can copyright, or what you try to protect with trade secrets)

The supremes trotted out some of the standard "no" arguments in the transcripts above.

In terms of music, for example, some pieces of music have a genuine drug-like euphoric effect. Why not let them be patented?

If you have patent protection, why do you need EULAs AND copyright AND trade secret protection?

Companies have tried to apply all of these forms of protection to a single piece of software. Fractal compression was one example. Patent a tiny piece of functionality and leave the description incomplete. To complete the functionality requires access to trade secrets. On top of all that, copyright and EULA everything to death.


Then there's the whole question of pollution of standards, which Rambus appears to have tried & MS currently seems to be trying - you have pending or actual patents and you (or your proxies) sit on standards bodies which will dictate how governments use technology. After the standard's in place and governments have passed laws requiring citizens and companies to used the standard, you spring your patents out - you've given yourself a printing press, enforceable by the government's guns.

[*T*]

Re: one of microsoft's lines of attack against Linux

IMO the problem is not the patenting of software, but that the patent office allows things to be patented when they should be disqualified either because there is prior art, or because they're f*ck*ng obvious. (So obvious in fact that you would never thing to check for a patent until you receive a nice letter from some hit and run patent attorney).'

If a new piece of software is non-obvious, has no prior art, and provides a genuinely useful service why should it not be subject to the same patent protection as hardware, drugs etc etc ?

A mathematical algorithm is not patentable. Why is software anything but an algorithm?

[lurker]

Re: one of microsoft's lines of attack against Linux

A mathematical algorithm is not patentable. Why is software anything but an algorithm?

I take your point, but does it not seem an odd situation where you can create a novel non-obvious invention and code it and run it on a microcontroller and not be able to patent it?

Or you could take that same invention and hard wire it into silicon and now you can patent it.

As I said before I think the problem is that there is not a sufficiently high bar in terms of non-obviousness, and not sufficiently thorough research in terms of prior art.

[tsetsefly]

Re: one of microsoft's lines of attack against Linux

IMO the problem is not the patenting of software, but that the patent office allows things to be patented when they should be disqualified either because there is prior art, or because they're f*ck*ng obvious. (So obvious in fact that you would never thing to check for a patent until you receive a nice letter from some hit and run patent attorney).'

If a new piece of software is non-obvious, has no prior art, and provides a genuinely useful service why should it not be subject to the same patent protection as hardware, drugs etc etc ?

the patent office is way behind the times is the problem...