01.24.16

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Several New Examples of Software Patents Being Crushed by Alice

Posted in America, Law, Patents at 10:54 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Even the United Stated (US) Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), the original creator of software patents, is required to obey the law

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Summary: Additional evidence of the consistent demise of software patents in the US, which had gradually become more lenient on the subject/domain and after the SCOTUS ruled against software patents any court which follows caselaw is now becoming strict, even reluctantly so

THE PAST fortnight brought us several new examples where software patents got invalidated — once brought before a court — thanks to the Alice case. This will be the subject of some imminent posts of ours. One example, as covered by Patent Hawk the other day, says: “First Choice Loan Services sued Mortgage Grader for infringing its financial transaction patents. In light of the Supreme Court’s Alice decision, the district court found the patent claims directed to unpatentable abstract ideas. The CAFC affirmed (2012-1042). “Computational methods which can be performed entirely in the human mind are the types of methods that embody the ‘basic tools of scientific and technological work’ that are free to all men and reserved exclusively to none.””

There is another report about it, composed by Andrew Chung and published by Reuters. It stated: “The owner of two patents on technology used for selecting mortgages online has learned the hard way just how much of a sea change the U.S. Supreme Court’s Alice v. CLS Bank decision was after a U.S. appeals court upheld the patents’ cancellation on Wednesday.

“A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said a California federal judge did not abuse his discretion in allowing, and then granting, a late-filed Alice-based motion to invalidate Mortgage Grader Inc’s patent claims.”

“A lot of campaigners against software patents are now seeing what 5 years ago they considered impossible.”A similar report (behind paywall) was composed by/for lawyers and asked: “Remember when some experts said the 2014 Supreme Court ruling wasn’t likely to be a game changer?” (the title of this report is “Federal Circuit [CAFC] Strikes Two Software Patents Under ‘Alice’“)

So who was right, the patent lawyers or Techrights? To his credit, Gene Quinn too predicted it would become a game changer.

CAFC is probably the most software patents-friendly court, perhaps in the whole world. Here is an article about a recent decision of CAFC, courtesy of patent maximalists. Patent lawyers still try to understand why software patents are collapsing even in the US and they study cases such as this one where “Claims of US patents 6,398,646 and 6,656,045 in the name of Planet Bingo, LLC were found not to be patent eligible subject matter under 35 USC 101 because the claims are directed to the abstract idea of managing a game of bingo, which is merely implemented on a computer executing purely conventional functions.”

Time permitting, we shall strive to cover as many cases like this as we can. There is an unambiguous trend in the US and it involves the demise of software patents, thanks to SCOTUS. A lot of campaigners against software patents are now seeing what 5 years ago they considered impossible. █

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