November 1st, 2008
Software and business method patents take a hit
What the courts giveth, other courts can taketh away.
Such may be the case with the famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) State Street decision which legalized software and business method patents a decade ago
Thursday, in a case called in re: Bilski, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit seems to have partly overturned State Street, throwing many of these patents into doubt.
This is the best legal news in a decade for open source. And open source was most definitely involved, evidenced by a Red Hat amicus brief in the case.
Pop some champagne! writes Groklaw. ” At issue was whether an abstract idea could be eligible for patent protection. The court says no.”
The British term seems appropriate here. I am gobsmacked. If you can’t patent how you hedge risks in commodities, you can’t very well patent simpler business processes like, say, one-click ordering.
The authors at PatentlyO do not think this eliminates well-written software patents, but many of those who commented on the post had their doubts.
Certainly we are not at the end of this, but for the first time in a long time advocates of software patents have been put on the defensive. This is really big.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 11/01/08
