Bonum Certa Men Certa

Business Methods Patents Die, Are Software Patents Next? (Bilski Full Text as HTML)

AN anticipated turning point has finally come. It's about Bilski, which we wrote about many times before [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27].



The ruling is in and it is an arrival of wonderful news. Here is the full document [PDF] (original here [PDF]). Here it is as HTML (it's a large document) and here it is as more complex HTML with thumbnails.

The Stop Software Patents campaign has already commented on the ruling.

The decision on the Bilski case has been published by the specialized patent court in the US (CAFC - Court of Appeal of the Federal Circuit). The judges says that the Bilski case is not helpful to draw the line between what is patentable and what is not in the case of software patents.


A few more notes can be found in Groklaw.

MR. OLSON [For Microsoft]: The '580 patent is a program, as I understand it, that's married to a computer, has to be married to a computer in order to be patented.

JUSTICE SCALIA: You can't patent, you know, on-off, on-off code in the abstract, can you?

MR. OLSON [For Microsoft]: That's correct, Justice Scalia.

JUSTICE SCALIA: There needs to be a device.

MR. OLSON [For Microsoft]: An idea or a principle, two plus two equals four can't be patented. It has to be put together with a machine and made into a usable device.

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