No Constitutional rights to patent

Summary: Court cases which serve to highlight the end of an era of software patents to all

Software patents are a terrifying concept. One can become an infringer and very quickly get sued (in bulk even) for merely typing one's own ideas on a keyboard. When it comes to the United States, things are at least improving. This lawyers' site has just shared the outcome of another case involving software patents where the patents lost in a big way. Moreover, it's the most zealous pro-software patents court that ruled against software patents. As the site puts it, "The Federal Circuit on Monday rejected software company E-Lynxx Corp.'s bid to revive claims in a $50 million lawsuit accusing InnerWorkings Inc., Cirqit.com Inc. and others of infringing patents for products that help choose the lowest bidder from a variety of vendors."

In other uplifting news: "As patent reform moved into the political spotlight during the last Congress, one patent that kept coming up was the "online shopping cart." It seemed to resonate as a technology that clearly shouldn't have been patented.

"By the time it started being brought up in Congressional hearings, though, the shopping cart patent was dead. Its owner, Soverain Software, was beaten when computer retailer Newegg won an appellate ruling invalidating its patents and throwing out the $2.5 million jury verdict against it."

Excellent! It's a step in the right direction and by precedence it will pave the way for similar rulings to come. This isn't about patent trolls; rather, it is about patent scope.

TechDirt just covered a study which claims to have busted the myth about hoarding ideas. Remember that patents were (way back in the days) a very different animal. There was a different rationale well before computers even existed. Patents were in some sense about increase in sharing and collaboration. That's what patents were about all at first, at the very beginning. It was about dissemination of knowledge (publication) in exchange for a temporary monopoly, ensuring knowledge is not completely lost in the interest of profit/protectionism by secrecy. Another myth is being addressed at Patent Progress these days, tackling the misconception about Constitutional rights to patents:

Congress was granted the power to promote progress of “science and useful arts” in a particular way. While Congress has the power to grant patents, it has no obligation to do so, which means that there is no constitutional right to a patent.

Patents should be granted (if ever at all) when there is empirical evidence that doing so would be collectively beneficial. All that software patents seem to have brought about is a circus of patent trolls, patent blackmail, removal of key features from programs, and retardation of startups. Many studies have been showing that the net outcome of software patents is overwhelmingly negative and US policy will hopefully be evidence-based as opposed to lawyers-driven and monopolies-steered. ⬆