09.10.15

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The Alice Case Beats Microsoft’s Patent Troll Intellectual Ventures (Yet Again)

Posted in America, Courtroom, Microsoft, Patents at 6:08 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“The genesis of this idea was when I was at Microsoft.” —Nathan Myhrvold, WSJ: Transcript: Myhrvold of Intellectual Ventures

Summary: Intellectual Ventures suffers another major blow as Alice v. CLS Bank (Alice/§101) smashes software patents in the United States

WE finally have some more good news regarding Microsoft’s pet troll, Intellectual Ventures (IV), which has been funded by and works with Bill Gates.

Patent Buddy, which has been good at tracking the post-Alice aftermath, has found this followup to previous IV v. Capital One losses, “Second IV Patent Asserted Against Capital One Also Killed by Alice/101,” he claims, linking to this ruling [PDF].

This is part of a broader trend because as Patent Buddy put it another day, “101 Patentability-USPTO Bypasses Substantive 103 Examination” (101 refers to Alice).

More software patents were being thrown down the drain by a judge last week. To quote Reuters: “A federal court in Delaware has invalidated a patent on multimedia messaging early in a lawsuit against some of the country’s largest cellphone providers, another example of a controversial trend that critics say wipes out patents before they are fully understood.”

“Anyone who is not intellectually dishonest because he or she does patent ‘business’ for a living would probably acknowledge by now that software patents are on their death throes.”“US business method patent applications down 52.4% since Alice,” moaned the patent lawyers in Twitter, pointing to their new analysis which states that: “Companies have pulled back drastically from filing business method patent applications in the US. Managing IP analysed figures for USPTO applications in patent class 705, the class covering “data processing” in which business method patents are placed.

“Patent applications in class 705 not only plummeted after the Alice decision on June 19 2014, but have kept tumbling.

“Some 8,620 class 705 patent applications were filed in the 12 months between July 1 2013 and June 30 2014. In the same period 12 months later, after Alice, the figure was 4,106 – a 52.4% drop.”

Patent maximalists that glorify the world’s biggest patent troll (IV) are now offering their ‘analysis’ (actually, offering by proxy), claiming that “Software Patents Are Resilient in the Wake of Alice Corp. vs. CLS Bank”.

Yeah, right. And the world is cooling down, too. According to News Corp. and other oil tycoons-connected ‘news’ networks. Anyone who is not intellectually dishonest because he or she does patent ‘business’ for a living would probably acknowledge by now that software patents are on their death throes. █

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