Could The Supreme Court Invalidate Software Patents?

Could The Supreme Court Invalidate Software Patents? | Techdirt:

Some folks claimed in response that Lee was advocating 'judicial activism,' and Scalia's hands were tied by the law itself. However, as Lee correctly retorts, the law does not explicitly say software patents are okay. In fact, the Supreme Court has ruled against such patents in the past. It's just that those rulings were a long time ago, and the lower courts (mainly CAFC) have chipped away at that over the past couple decades. Lee points out that in 1972, when the Supreme Court first rejected software patents in Gottschalk v. Benson, it invited Congress to change patent law if Congress intended for software to be patentable. Congress did nothing.

Bilski's growing up, and smacking down some bad software patents | opensource.com

Bilski's growing up, and smacking down some bad software patents:

"That trend is continuing in a good direction. A new study of the first full year of decisions applying Bilski to software confirms that the direction of the case law is toward finding software is not patentable subject matter. The study by Robert Greene Sterne and Michelle K. Holoubek is titled The Practical Side of §101 : One year post-Bilski: How the decision is being interpreted by the BPAI, District Courts, and Federal Circuit. [PDF] It contains brief summaries of 182 decisions of the BPAI, 6 federal district court decisions, and 3 Federal Circuit decisions. The majority of the BPAI and district court decisions concern software. And many of those software decisions apply Bilski to find that the subject matter is too abstract to be patented."

Is software too abstract to be patented? | opensource.com

Is software too abstract to be patented? | opensource.com:

"The serious problem of proliferating bad software patents was not solved by the Supreme Court's Bilski decision, but now it's looking like it may be part of the solution. The early case law applying Bilski is much more encouraging than expected. The new Bilski test focuses on whether an application attempts to patent “an abstract idea.” That new test has already been applied to reject applications for quite a few bad software patents, and with more lawsuits, it could invalidate a lot more. To advance on this, we need to figure out out better ways to explain what software is and show when it is an unpatentable abstract idea."