Summary: What the UK Intellectual Property Office and the EPO ought to learn now that software patents are candidates for deletion in the United States

The final decision regarding Bilski is imminent [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] and Groklaw writes about the Bilski decision which leads it to "suspense". To legal folks it matters a great deal.

No opinion on In Re Bilski will issue today. The next possibility is June 21.

Opinions today were in Dillon v. United States, Schwab v. Reilly, Ontario v. Quon, Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Dept. of Environmental Protection and New Process Steel, L. P. v. NLRB. All are available at the link as PDFs, and there are some highlights by Tony Mauro on Law.com.

According to SCOTUSblog, Schwab was the last undecided case, except for Bilski, argued during the last November session.

I don't know about you, but the suspense is killing me.

Groklaw then rebuts Patent WatchTroll, perhaps choosing to pay attention to lawyers to whom science is measured in terms of paperwork. They measure patent output, which is not a scientific measure of progress. They have also hijacked the patent system in order to increase benefits to themselves. Bastian Best is one example of someone who wants software patents in Europe for selfish reasons. A short while ago he asked: "Does anyone know a reliable #statistic about the number of #swpat filings vs. patents granted at the #EPO and the #USPTO? Help appreciated!"

As Simon Phipps put it regarding this article from March:

Not only is the patent system broken (it has forgotten to protect the public good in return for granting a temporary monopoly), but it turns out that thousands of the things are kept secret.

Shaped for an analog age where businesses were control points in a disconnected society, patents have become sinkholes for money an innovation in the connected digital age, allowing unjust monopolisation and chilling of network effects.

We are /so/ overdue reform of the patent system, in the UK, the US and pretty much everywhere else.

Patent lawyers in Europe are trying to legalise software patents and to an extent they succeed while the US goes the other way. In order to avoid the mistakes of the USPTO (which the Bilski trial seeks to correct), people all across Europe should refuse to acknowledge software patents. ⬆