Bonum Certa Men Certa

Patent Lawyers' Media Comes to Grips With the End of Software Patents

The Federal Circuit always says "no" to software patents (this year at least) and the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) rejects any petitions for it to deal with such matters

Will Any Software Patents Survive?



Summary: The reality of the matter is grim for software patents and the patent microcosm, 'borrowing' the media as usual, tries to give false hopes by insinuating that the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) may overturn Alice quite soon

THE battle in the courtroom is over. Software patents are pretty much over. So the battle has been taken to the press, where the patent 'industry' places its lies and marketing on an almost daily basis. We keep track of all this.



"So the battle has been taken to the press, where the patent 'industry' places its lies and marketing on an almost daily basis."Yesterday/today, using the word "survive" in the headline (inverting narratives, wherein the aggressor merely "survives" or is "attacked" by the defendant), the high-factor media of lawyers speaks of Alice and asks, "Will Any Software Patents Survive?"

Here is the outline:

In his Patent and Trademark Law column, Robert L. Maier writes: In recent weeks, the Federal Circuit has continued to affirm district court decisions finding software-related patents invalid for failure to meet the patentable subject matter requirement of 35 U.S.C. €§101. At the same time, a petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court was filed seeking to challenge the availability of this very defense—a petition that, if heard by the Supreme Court, could have dramatic implications for U.S. patent litigation.


They have been saying things like these for a number of months, but it never materialises. SCOTUS won't be revisiting the subject of software patents any time soon (if ever). We wrote about this dozens of times before. The above is one of those "real soon now" prophecies/narratives (akin to Team UPC's); they just try to give a glimmer of hope to clients and convince them to carry on pursuing software patents.

What does all this say about the patent law firms? Or about the media? Watch this new example of marketing disguised as a report. There are lots of these. Is the media engaging in any real journalism of just PR/advertising?

"What does all this say about the patent law firms? Or about the media? "Going back to the subject of patents, TiVo has just won an ITC battle against rivals [1, 2, 3] and Uber got a patent on something which sounds like marketing and/or placebo effect (lots of these around, this time motion-induced sickness prevention for Uber's "own self-driving software"). This whole article is like an advert based on a patent and there are also press releases bragging about software patents this week. This particular one says:

StorONE is the first company in the last decade to invest a six-year period of massive research and development, covered by more than 50 awarded and pending patents, prior to its first software release.


What's worth noting here is that at least some of the above pertain purely to software, even if used in conjunction with something like a car, a set top box, or storage device.

It seems safe to say, based on people who studied a large number of patents, that hundreds of thousands of granted US patents are software patents and are thus 'dormantly' invalid. They just haven't been challenged yet; if they had, they would evaporate. Such is the profound impact of Alice and precedential decisions it led to.

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