I disagree. Not only because I own several software patents, but because Patents are not meant to merely cover the invention of physical objects as you stated. Under U.S. patent law, any person who "invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent." ... The only reservation is that the invention must not be obvious.
I agree that some patents are granted for software that should never be patented because it fails the obviousness test. That's simply a problem with the patent examiner's inexperience with software and coding techniques. That doesn't mean that all software is non patent-able just because a few patent applicants abuse the process. There is absolutely no textual support for the creation of any judicial exceptions to patent eligibility. There are three identified judicial exceptions which are: laws of nature, physical phenomena and abstract ideas. If the claim does NOT seek to protect one of those judicial exception then the claim is patent eligible. In the case you were referring to, the problem with the claims in that trial were that they tended to be very abstract and vague and did nothing to further the limits of the patent. Had they specified specifics, the patent probably would never have been granted in the first place. Just because the patent application was vague and inconsistent, doesn't make all software patents bad, nor does it reflect badly on any other specific software patents. For instance, I had an idea several years ago to try to figure out a way to send an email (or any number of emails) at the end of every job without any system mods or exits (which would make the software too dependent on the Operating system code level). At that original stage of my thinking, as an abstract idea, it was not patent-able, but that in itself would not stop a lot of companies from patenting it and that is unfortunate. It took a while but I eventually figured out a way to create and send the email (or even SMS text message) that contains all of the relevant information from the job, it's condition codes and the JES and task's SYSOUT if you wish, plus any static or user generated text (including hundreds of variable data elements) all without any JCL changes, system exit code, mods etc. It was extremely difficult to just figure out a way to do it and then I spent literally years working on different ideas (most of which were discarded), and finally came up with a repeatable and innovative way to do it. In fact, after I figured it out, I thought of 4 completely separate ways to implement the basic code to accomplish the same thing. No one else thought of how to do it, or still does know how to do it. But... one of the sites that I allowed to beta test the working code, (another software company which I had performed development work for in the past who I shall not mention), decided to not only copy the idea, code and all, but to market it and actually got it into 10 beta test sites. My patent was still pending, but without that protection, the other company (which is considerably larger) would have just laughed in my face. In this case, they not only stole the code (which violated my copyright), but they even attempted to patent the process. I found out about it directly from the patent office of all places.:) They contacted me because the company actually included one of my drawings in their filing with my patent application number at the bottom. Needless to say, they backed off and agreed to not only stop marketing it,and destroy the software copies, but they agreed to cease all "development of any similar products" for a period not less than 10 years. Plus, all of their developers had to agree to be bound by the terms of the agreement. In the article, the judge was completely missing the patent boat. Had I not already applied for my patent, they would have kept right on with stealing my idea and making money from it, and there would have been nothing I could do about it. I could give many examples of tangible items which would fall under that same overly simplistic logic. By his definition the process of "making" something would not be patent-able, only the item which is made. So that would mean that the techniques for making medicine would not be patent-able in any way, only the medicine that is the end result. On Fri, 7 Oct 2016 09:16:02 -0500, Joel C. Ewing <jcew...@acm.org> wrote: >On 10/07/2016 07:21 AM, John McKown wrote: >> https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/10/07/0455200/prominent-pro-patent-judge-issues-opinion-declaring-all-software-patents-bad >> >> http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-orders/15-1769.Opinion.9-28-2016.1.PDF >> >Amazing! The courts may finally be on the verge of returning patents to >what they were intended to protect: the invention of physical objects >that require significant investment in physical infrastructure to >research, develop, and manufacture -- not concepts and algorithms that >can be discovered or re-discovered by anyone with a writing instrument >and a recording media just by employing basic concepts of logic and >algorithmic design. Congress had no idea what they were doing when they >opened the door to software and business method patents. > Joel C. Ewing > >-- >Joel C. Ewing, Bentonville, AR jcew...@acm.org > >---------------------------------------------------------------------- >For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, >send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
