Summary: Congress should be given a compelling motive for review of software patents now that the Obama administration speaks out against patents on genetics

IN A RARE STEP, the Obama administration expressed its opposition to gene patents last month, as we last noted just days ago. Perhaps it is time to do the same by reassessing software patents from a high-authority point of view which has not any vested interests in patenting. That is a suggestion we made last week.

The 271 Patent Blog (by Peter Zura) has this interesting new post quoting: "The Court, per Justice Douglas, concluded the short opinion with a discussion of the then-raging debate on patenting computer programs. It quoted the Presidential Commission recommendation against patenting computer programs. It noted that "extending" the patent laws to cover "these programs" was a matter not for the courts but for Congress . . . Congressional action was not forthcoming. In the 38 years since Benson, Congress has not directly addressed patent eligible subject matter."

And another recent one from the same blog has the title "Unbridled "Optimization" Term in Software Patent Claim Leads to Finding of Indefiniteness" [via Falk Metzler]. It says:

DRT sued defendants on patents directed to computer-implemented methods for retrieving information stored in databases without the need for human analysis of the source data. One of the claims in the patent recited a driver that automatically obtains information about the data structure of a data source "wherein said information about the data structure leads to optimization of a new database in which information from said first database is to be stored."

Can anyone not see how ridiculous software patents have become? Even optimisation of code is now becoming a monopoly which is based on or can be reduced/abstracted to mathematical notions rather than implementation (copyright law already covers the latter). ⬆