THE MORE the corporate press complains about patents, the more involved the public will become and the better informed people will be. It is gratifying to see big publishers voicing scepticism of the current patent system and even lawyers' site acknowledge that we may be approaching the end of software patents, even in the United States (watch patenting maximalists try to be objective). Quoting Law.com:

A closely watched appellate ruling invalidating broad software patents claims because they covered "unpatentable mental processes" isn't as straightforward as it seems, Silicon Valley lawyers say.

The Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals' Aug. 16 ruling in CyberSource v. Retail Decisions, 2009-1358, leaves room for debate about what kinds of business methods can be patented, thanks to one word: practicality.

Business methods that could be performed by the human mind still could be patentable because, as a practical matter, they have to be done on a computer, the court said. Figuring out what processes meet that criteria could lead to heated court battles in the months ahead, lawyers predict.

The question is, what do we do when we have to keep playing the game, given the endemic problem of the emergence of strategies that subvert the intent of the game.

In the latest filing by Lodsys [PDF] in response to the Apple motion to intervene in the Lodsys v. Combay case, Lodsys gives every indication it is in a panic to keep Apple from intervening. Much of the document is redacted, but despite that fact we can glean the sense that Apple's entry into the lawsuit spoils Lodsys's entire theory of the litigation, at least with respect to the Apple (and likely Google) developers.

EU en route to US-style software patent nightmare

The EU could see the introduction of software patent wars seen in the US if it continues with plans for a ‘unitary patent’.

According to Richard Matthew Stallman, writing at the Guardian, there is a very real danger that software patents could be enforced across the whole of Europe (with the exceptions of Italy and Spain), should the unitary patent system go ahead.

The introduction of such patents would have the potential to be highly detrimental to the development of software, and the recent Hargreaves Report urged strongly against them.

However as Stallman says there are concerns that under EU plans the European Patent Office would be given the green light to issue software patents that would be valid automatically in many European states.