Summary: A positive take on recent developments, impacting statistics in the United States, which serve to highlight the importance of abolishing software patents

IN THE previous post, the decline or demise of software patents was noted, backed by new examples. CAFC's introduction of software patents nearly 4 decades ago in the United States has reached a crossroad or a turning point. No longer are the weapons of patent trolls effective, unless the trolls manage to settle out of court (as is usually the case when they silently extort small companies). It's nothing other than "protection money", shrewdly disguised as "business as usual" or a legitimate "business model". According to the EPO-funded IAM 'magazine', there is a "Big fall in US patent suit filings following pleading standards change" (they cite a respected data source which keeps track of the numbers). Remember that IAM 'magazine' is again, by its own admission (as was the case last year), being paid by patent trolls (sorry, we mean, "NPEs"). The alleged decline in lawsuits must be a cause of concern for these patent maximalists. It means less money for patent lawyers.

Alluding to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), Dennis Crouch writes that it "has released an interesting new (though non-precedential) decision on patent exhaustion – in particular the court affirmed a lower court finding of exhaustion based upon a retroactive sublicense filed after the lawsuit was filed and the patents had expired. The case offers some further guidance as to how patent licenses are treated in complex mergers."

"No longer are the weapons of patent trolls effective, unless the trolls manage to settle out of court (as is usually the case when they silently extort small companies)."This is noteworthy as it further serves to limit passage of patents for aggression before expiry (this is where a lot of patent trolling comes from).

Another noteworthy report says that Google, which is less than 20 years old (the lifetime of a patent), is hiding software patents. Jesse Drucker wrote: "More than a decade ago, Google moved a chunk of its software patents offshore as part of a Double Irish." Slashdot is meanwhile indicating that "Google Submits Patent Application For Online Voting". That's very clearly and unambiguously a software patent. To quote Slashdot: "Google has outlined a concept for real-time online voting in the Google home page in a patent to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Entitled 'Social Voting-Based Campaigns in Search', the application proposes a voting user interface (VUI) that will enable a user to submit one or more votes in a voting-based campaign, giving the hypothetical example of a campaign to vote for the 'Top American Singer', with users authenticated via Google log-ins. If implemented, the system would represent a new foray for Google into generating rather than recording analytics and metrics of popularity."

"The alleged decline in lawsuits must be a cause of concern for these patent maximalists. It means less money for patent lawyers."It will be interesting to see if some time in the future Google might choose to disseminate patents to trolls (for attacks, or weaponisation through proxies) in the same way that Microsoft gives patents to trolls which soon thereafter attack Linux (we gave several examples of this in the past), often addressing/sending the lawsuits and letters to Red Hat and Google. Some of the above news, regarding lawsuit numbers, potency of software patents and a new decision from CAFC serve to reassure us that things may be getting better faster than they get worse. But we must all be vigilant. ⬆