Software Patents Challenged in U.S. Supreme Court

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Tue, 2009-10-06 20:58

radiorahim radiorahim's picture

"BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA -- Friday, October 2, 2009 -- The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today submitted an amicus curiae brief calling on the Supreme Court to affirm that software ideas are not patentable. After outlining the positive impact that the free software movement and the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) have had on computer use, the brief explains how software patents are an obstacle and a danger to software developers.

FSF founder Richard Stallman and the free software movement have been campaigning worldwide against software patents since the late 1980s, but the effort in the United States is coming to a head with the Supreme Court now reviewing patentable scope for the first time since 1981's Diamond v. Diehr case."

This would be very cool if software was declared "unpatentable" as it is as I understand is the case in the EU.

It is just about impossible these days to write any kind of computer programme without coming up against someone's software patent...or "patent trolls" who buy up software patents in the hope that they can sue somebody some day.

Software patents actually hinder the development of new software.

The rest here:

http://www.fsf.org/news/bilski-supreme-court-brief

Wed, 2009-10-21 20:09

Brian White

I think it is awesome. I read in a pro business mag in victoria a few months ago about how high the percentage of patent applications that became patents actually is. It varies a lot between countrys. It is extraordinarly high in the usa! (Thats patents in general) not just software patents. Once someone (or some country) is armed with a patent, it is sitting ducks if someone else "infringes" it or is already making a product that infringes the patent before it is granted.

Here is another interesting thing about patents. A much higher percentage of them go to immigrants. Why? And one reason is easy to find. Check back to the home country. The "patent" is often derivitave of massive leads in some or other technology over Canada or USA.

Here is one that I have not checked out. The former eastern block countrys must have had a bad start in antibotics so they explored a totally different way to fight bacterial infections. It involved viruses and tiny bacteria that prey on their bigger relatives. so if you do a us patent search and find a bunch of eastern european names on the patents, bingo bange, you got the smoking gun of intelectual thieft authorized by the captains of industry