Bonum Certa Men Certa

Great News: The US Supreme Court Shoots Down Software Patents Again

But the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), where corruption has been rather rampant, gets more of a say as a result

Money



Summary: The outcome of the US Supreme Court refusing to intervene in the Sequenom v Ariosa case -- a case which would have put at risk the strongly-worded Alice and Mayo decisions (SCOTUS level)

WITH a software patents-friendly USPTO and software patents-hostile courts (even in the US) there certainly is a problem. One strives to make more money by granting (accepting) as much as 92% of applications (causing a massive spike in grants) and another actually delivers justice, where there's no incentive to 'bless' every patent that's at stake. It's a bit like EPO examination versus reassessment at the appeal boards or USPTO versus PTAB.



A new article by Professor Dennis Crouch says that the Supreme Court will deal with Life Tech v Promega but not with a lot of other cases. "Alice and Mayo Remain" says another article in relation to the Sequenom petition (mentioned here before), which is very good news as it indicates that software patents will carry on dying, at least in the courts and at PTAB (irrespective of how reckless and selfish the USPTO chooses to be). "Patentees in the biotech and software industries had placed substantial hope on the pending Supreme Court case of Sequenom v. Ariosa," wrote Crouch. "The hope being that the case would serve as a vehicle for the Court to step-back from the strong language of Alice and Mayo that has led to rejection and invalidation for many. The Supreme Court has now denied certiorari in Sequenom – effectively ending that campaign."

Fantastic!

"It's a bit like EPO examination versus reassessment at the appeal boards or USPTO versus PTAB."We shortly thereafter found many polite complaints about this in patent lawyers' Web sites like this one. It's not exactly shocking that patent lawyers are sad that SCOTUS Justices won't give software patents another chance. Watch how this gets framed as a 'clarification' issue (it's not) over at patent lawyers' Web sites that constantly bemoan this decision. Even some financial sites wrote about it (after earlier reports that pertain to financial speculations), life science Web sites wrote about it [1, 2, 3], and lobbyists of software patents were not exactly enthusiastic. "Drug industry overstates impact of patent reviews on innovation" is one good article about it (more from the same site), here is an objective site, and here is MIP writing about both aforementioned cases. "Fingers Crossed" is how some patent maximalists put it ahead of the decision, barely hiding their biases. The corporate media covered this as well [1, 2, 3, 4]. It's quite unusual for those kinds of stories.

Ars Technica wrote about the former case as follows: "The US Supreme Court has taken up its next patent case, which may well lead to another decision sharply overturning a ruling by the nation's top patent court.

"As we are going to show later, CAFC is already pushing against Alice in a newly-issued decision."Here's how the case made it to the high court: Life Technologies Corporation, part of Thermo Fisher Scientific, manufactures a genetic testing kit in the United Kingdom. The company sells this product worldwide. Life Tech made one element of the kit, called a Taq polymerase, in the United States and then shipped it to the UK to combine with the larger product."

This case, unlike the latter one, hardly threatens Alice and Mayo in any way.

The only downside is that, in the words of the EFF, "Supreme Court Gives More Leeway to Lower Courts on Patents and Copyright: Will Lower Courts Champion Innovation?" Remember that by giving more influence to lower courts like CAFC the reality is that those who brought software patents to the US in the first place will gain more power. As we are going to show later, CAFC is already pushing against Alice in a newly-issued decision.

Recent Techrights' Posts

The Register Bill
The Register MS - putting the "MS" in your centre of the universe
Analogies for "Memory Safety" in Rust
Don't worry, it's Rust! It can do anything!
 
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 06, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, September 06, 2025
Microsoft Sites Now Talking About September's Mass Layoffs at Microsoft
It's noteworthy that even Microsoft's MSN now covers the latest revelations about mass layoffs
Gemini Links 06/09/2025: SpellBinding Moving and "The Cloud" Ridiculed
Links for the day
Slopwatch: On "the Apology Industry", Chatbots (Punchbag for Customers), and Fake Articles About "Linux"
"news reporting priorities changed"
Links 06/09/2025: "Covid Incidence on the Rise" and Many Attacks on the Press Worldwide
Links for the day
Nobody Denies That SecureBoot Will Cause Problems After September 11
Not even Microsoft
Gemini Links 06/09/2025: Infinite Scrolling and Posting from Emacs
Links for the day
Links 06/09/2025: GitHub Meltdown Over Slop, "U.S. Jury Says Google Should Pay $425 Million in Privacy Lawsuit"
Links for the day
Despite Its Severe Financial Problems Gnome Foundation Inc Paid Rosanna Yuen Over 100,000 Dollars Last Year
maybe relocation should be considered
The "Left" and the Right"
It poisons everything
Mozilla and Rust Are Not Leftists
they're part of the mass consumerism machine
Disposable to Microsoft
There is an extensive set of people who got used by Microsoft, only to be thrown away a month later or a year later or a decade later
The UEFI 9/11 - Part VII - This Coming Week Many PCs Will Refuse to Boot "Linux" (Because of Microsoft's Expired Certificate)
The real solution is, disable "secure boot" or "SecureBoot" while it's still possible. [...] Just like submarine patents, a lot of this problem was "hibernating" for a while
The Thing Nobody in Red Hat Wants to Talk About Openly
There is a real sentiment or worry among Red Hatters, Europeans and Americans in particulars (because of higher salary expectations)
Slopwatch: Small Parade of Fake News About "Linux" and Scams Borrowing the Name (or Word) "Linux"
In practice, LLMs are a risk
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, September 05, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, September 05, 2025
Genini Links 05/09/2025: Community, ROOPHLOCH, and PITkit
Links for the day
Links 05/09/2025: Vaccine Sceptics Poison the Well, Two Exploited Vulnerabilities Patched in Android
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/09/2025: Logitech Lift and DIY Gemini Servers
Links for the day
Links 05/09/2025: Sainsbury's Caught Spying on In-Store Shoppers and Microsoft "OpenAI is Using Legal Threats to Harass its Critics"
Links for the day
BASIC Predates Microsoft by Over a Decade, Microsoft-Controlled Sites Like The Register MS Don't Want You to Know This
The state of the media is really bad when it relies a lot on oligarchs' money and is appointing editors who are working for oligarchs
Brian Kernighan, "Only Third to Dennis Richie and Ken Thompson" (UNIX), Agreed With Someone Who Said Rust Was Just Hype, Should Not Replace C
17 hours ago
Reminder: Microsoft's "Secure Boot" Certificate for "Linux" Will be Expired in One Week
Many PCs won't manage to 'rotate' to another certificate
"Many of the Red Hat Employees Are Still Looking for Work"
Shame on IBM's CEO
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, September 04, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, September 04, 2025
Microsoft Started With Code Literally From The Trash, Nothing Has Improved Since
The reality is, there are systems and code that are reliable. But they're not Microsoft's.
Hypothesis That New McKinsey/Microsoft Executive Inside Red Hat Will Outsource Research and Development Operations to India (Like They Do in IBM)
IBM is floundering
Slopwatch: Scams, Fake Articles About "Linux", Plagiarism, and Worse
Perhaps some time soon the LLMs or the "Big LLMs" will run out of money (to borrow) and go offline, leaving those slopfarms in a tough place