Bonum Certa Men Certa

Patents on Business Methods and Software Are Collapsing, But the Patent Microcosm is Working Hard to Change That

People like Robert Sachs (on the right) try to cherry-pick cases and make these precedential (to help patent maximalists/aggressors)

Robert R. SachsSummary: The never-ending battle over patent law, where those who are in the business of patents push for endless patenting, is still ongoing and resistance/opposition is needed from those who actually produce things (other than litigation) or else they will be perpetually taxed by parasites

FOLLOWING a SCOTUS decision nearly 3 years ago the patent landscape has not been the same in the US. The "effect of the Supreme Court’s Alice decision was to kill about 75% of all BM [business method] patent applications stone dead," Mark Summerfield has just said, having said the same thing earlier this year. Here is the part about software patents:



Software patent grants, however, continue to track the rates at which patents are issued by the USPTO across all fields of technology. I therefore feel confident in reiterating my earlier comments that ‘software patents’ in general are not in trouble. There is no evidence that the mere fact that computer software is used to implement an invention – even where the invention relates wholly to computer technology, such as in user interfaces, document processing, databases, and so forth – is a barrier to patent eligibility in the US.


But these die at the courts and in the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), so this merely indicates that the USPTO does not do enough to account for these decisions. We wrote this many times before.

Watch Fenwick & West, a law firm that habitually attacks Alice, still working hard this month not just to spread software patents but also business method patents. To quote the latest from them:

On Wednesday, the Federal Circuit, in a per curiam order, denied SHzoom's motion to make the Trading Technologies opinion precedential. The order of course gave no reasons for the decision. Nonetheless, the underlying decision is still a good one for patentees and applicants.

While not binding on the USPTO, it can nonetheless be argued as persuasive authority with examiners where the facts in the application "uniquely match" those in the case. Prosecutors should consider arguing this case to examiners where they have specifically claimed graphical elements that provide specific functionality.


We certainly hope that these patent maximalists don't get their way. Software patents have long hobbled Free/Open Source software and proprietary software too. Up until now, including in 2017, these have been turning software freedom into something synonymous with "infringement". As someone put it some days ago: "*whispers into the air* …the final patents on MP3 technology expired today…"

It's about time. How many people suffered due to these patents? How many people struggled to get decoders to play their audio files? Or resorted to do something against patent law?

Finally, as an aside, we used to think more highly of Law 360, but Matthew Bultman adopts the misleading language of the patent microcosm, where defense from patents magically means "attack" (on the patent/s). This is not an attack, it's a defense, but watch how Bultman put it both in the headline and the opening paragraph:

PTAB Rejects Some Follow-Up Attacks To Software Patents



The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has rejected a handful of recent attacks brought by Xactware Solutions Inc. against a rival’s patents covering aerial rooftop measurement software, saying the New Jersey company was morphing its challenges based on earlier board decisions.


This is another example of PTAB stepping in to reassess and usually correct the USPTO. The patent microcosm likes to just cherry-pick the situation in which the patents "survive" (their misleading term) scrutiny. As in the above...

Recent Techrights' Posts

Now Confirmed in Western Media: Microsoft Azure Layoffs This Month
Affirmed by more sources moments ago
The 'Culture Wars' in Free Software Have Gone Out of Control
Social control media amplifies such utterly infantile discourse
10 Out of 10: RMS Attracts Massive Audience in Göteborg, Sweden (All Seats Occupied, Some People Standing)
a 55-second clip of his talk
The Lawsuit by Clients of Brett Wilson LLP Against Brett Wilson LLP is Officially On, It is Progressing, The 'Experts' Pick Outside Law Firms (RPC and Mills & Reeve) to Spare Them From Litigants in Person
So it is probably quite potent
Slopwatch: Plagiarism and "Linux" Articles by Bots
Sites that do this won't survive; many of them rely on slop services (suppliers) that will cease to exist after the bubble bursts
 
Links 11/10/2025: World Mental Health Day 2025, Another European Legal Defeat for Microsoft 360
Links for the day
MIT Technology Review is Part-Time SPAMfarm of Billionaires and Mega-Corporations
Does MIT operate its own "b2b" SPAMfarm?
Open Source Initiative Executive Director Leaves, Replacement Sought by Monopolists, Not the Community or OSI Members
Serves to show who runs this show...
Links 11/10/2025: China-US Tensions Grow Again, "Hey Hi" More Widely Recognised as Bubble Made of Capital That Doesn't Exist
Links for the day
Peter O'Callaghan QC represented grandparents, Westernport Hotel, at Liquor Royal Commission
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Either The Register MS Divests From FOSS Coverage or Liam Proven is on Long Holiday
Publishers perish when their audience loses trust in them
Microsoft Cancelling Another Datacentre is a Sign of Financial Trouble and Lack of Growth
The debt continues to grow
Gemini Links 11/10/2025: An Evening at the Fair and Fast Fourier Friday
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 10, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, October 10, 2025
Geminispace is Very Large
The word continues to spread and the number of participants grows
Teaser: To Compensate for the Fact Our Clients Are Terrible Human Beings Who Strangle Women (While on Microsoft's Payroll) and We Get Paid by Mystery Parties We Bombard You and Your Wife With Almost 10 Kilograms of Legal Papers
If you can't win an argument, then drown the other side with papers?
Another Wave of Microsoft Layoffs, This Time During National Day Holiday
This time it's China again
Staying Happy in Times of Crackdowns on Civil Society
Optimism in this sort of "new reality" or "new normal" seems like something for the irrational person
"Nobel" Exploited Posthumously for "AI" Hype, Now They Do the Same With "Quantum"
ere have been many jokes about "Nobel" for peace (often granted to pro-war people) and a fake one for "Economics" (establishment propaganda)
Distinguished Lecture by Richard Stallman This Coming Monday in Rome
After "Free software, Crucial for Freedom in a Digital World"
Links 10/10/2025: Putin Admits Russia Downed Azerbaijan Airlines Jet, More New Heat Records
Links for the day
Noteworthy Claim That IBM is Firing a Lot of Lawyers This Week (RAs in the Legal Department)
A lot of what they do is patent 'trolling' or lawyering up against their own staff (e.g. HR disputes)
Links 10/10/2025: US Judge Bars Attacks by ICE On Journalists and Protesters; “We Took The Freedom of Speech Away” Says the President
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Serial Sloppers, Google News Gifting Slopfarms, and Fake News/Plagiarism About "Linux"
Google itself is a slop pusher these days
Qualcomm, the New Owner of Arduino, Blasted for Its Software Patents Tax on 'Smartphones'
A lot of Qualcomm's patents are on software. We wrote about this in prior years.
XBox Layoffs Rumours, Downtime, and Criticism From XBox Co-Founder
"everyone is ditching the xbox."
Links 10/10/2025: Honoring The Legacy Of Robert Murray-Smith, Many Articles on the Hey Hi (AI) Bubble
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: October Gothic and Reading Middle Earth Role Playing; C and Ada
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 09, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 09, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Farewell to Jane Goodall, California Bans Algorithmic Price-Fixing
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Lost Wages and a Saga Of Continuing To Use Palm PDAs
Links for the day
Richard Stallman's Talk in Helsinki is Done. Tomorrow Göteborg.
There are scarce details in Finnish about Dr. Stallman's talk
New XBox Leaks Probably Serve to Confirm XBox's Collapse (Many More Layoffs)
It's very much consistent with what many other sites have reported lately
The Slop Song
The train wreck marches on
LLM Slop/Advanced Plagiarism Flooding the Zone With Capital That Does Not Exist
Many publishers out there still participate in this bubble instead of calling it what it is
Links 09/10/2025: Sacked Microsoft Workers Make "Sackbird", IBM Taps CockroachDB for PostgreSQL
Links for the day
"Happy Hacking Day" Richard Stallman Talk This Afternoon (From 14:00 to 16:00) at Haaga-Helia University in Pasila
Richard Stallman in Helsinki, Finland
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 08, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 08, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Impact of Microsoft Layoffs, More Data Breaches
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Autumn Blues and C IRC Bot
Links for the day