Ciarán O'Riordan has put together a summary of the judgement:
"There will be debate about how far this ruling goes, but the direction it goes in is clear: 100% in the direction of abolishing software patents"
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Alice_v._CLS_Bank_ruling_by_US_Supreme_Court_on_19_June_2014
In mobilità
Il giorno 19/giu/2014, alle ore
20:12, Stefano Quintarelli <stefano@quintarelli.it>
ha scritto:
Supreme Court deals blow to
computer patents in 9-0 ruling
By Jeff John Roberts
Jun 19 2014
<http://gigaom.com/2014/06/19/supreme-court-deals-blow-to-computer-patents-in-9-0-ruling/>
SUMMARY:
A new Supreme Court decision
will cut down the number of computer-related patents, but
will not, as some had hoped, eliminate software patents
altogether.
The Supreme Court declared
Thursday that a patent related to a centuries old
financial concept was invalid since it was an abstract
idea, even though the concept was implemented through a
computer.
The court’s unanimous ruling
serves to narrow the type of “inventions” that can be
eligible for patents, and amounts to a minor victory for
the technology industry and other companies that have long
claimed about software-related patents.
The case itself involved a
patent for escrow services held by Alice Corp, a shell
company regarded by many as a patent troll. The patent’s
validity was challenged by CLS Bank, which runs a currency
transaction network, and which argued that Alice’s patent
simply described a settlement mechanism that banks have
used for centuries.
“We conclude that the method
claims, which merely require generic computer
implementation, fail to transform that abstract idea into
a patent-eligible invention,” wrote Justice Clarence
Thomas.
Thomas also cautioned against
allowing patents that relied on “the draftsman’s art” to
turn abstract notions into monopolies on ideas.
The ruling appears to call into
question the validity of thousands of patents which
describe a familiar idea, but rely on a “method” of
implementing it with a computer.
Although the decision does not
unequivocally declare software patents to be invalid, it
expresses deep skepticism of “simply appending
conventional steps” to an abstract idea in an effort to
make it patent-eligible.
The opinion does suggest,
however, that patents may still be obtained that “improve
the functioning of the computer itself or effect an
improvement in any other technology or technical field.”
It also cautions that the goal of preventing patents that
cover abstract ideas should not “swallow all of patent
law.”
Thomas’s opinion drew heavily on
the reasoning from another recent case, called Myriad
Genetics, in which the Supreme Court invalidated patents
over human genes. Both opinions hold that applying
familiar techniques to non-patentable things does not
result in a patentable invention.
The Alice case amounted to
unfinished business of sorts for the Supreme Court. In
2010, the court addressed the same issues in a case called
Bilksi, but failed to provide any clarity about what type
of subject matter can — and cannot — be patented, which in
turn produced another rat’s nest of lower court opinions.
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