“The U.S. Supreme Court made it easier to challenge patents for failing to introduce genuine innovations, siding with Intel Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. and dealing a setback to the drug and biotechnology industries,” Greg Stohr reports for Bloomberg.
“The justices today unanimously overturned a decades-old test used by the lower court that handles patent appeals, saying the lower court went too far to shield patents from legal attack. The ruling threw out a Teleflex Inc. lawsuit that accuses KSR International Inc. of using a patented invention for adjustable gas pedals,” Stohr reports.
Stohr reports, “The decision extends a Supreme Court trend that has put new limits on patent rights. In today’s case, the justices heeded arguments from large computer companies and automakers that the lower court test, which centered on the requirement that an invention be ‘non-obvious,’ had given too much power to developers of trivial technological improvements.”
“‘Granting patent protection to advances that would occur in the ordinary course without real innovation retards progress,’ Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court,” Stohr reports.
Stohr reports, “In a second ruling today, the court gave software makers new protections from patent lawsuits on exports, ruling that Microsoft Corp. doesn’t owe damages to AT&T Inc. for copies of the Windows operating system installed on computers overseas.”
Full article here.
“The U.S. Supreme Court made it easier to challenge patents for failing to introduce genuine innovations…” Microsoft’s patent portfolio is doomed. 
In Europe there are no patents for software and business methods (yet – the magic word!) and it seems to work well, many of the chip designs come from UK (Cambridge especially).
No software patents in Europe? So what prevents MS from packaging Mac OS X and selling it as Vista Super Duper With a Cherry on Top?
So, a patent has to be revolutionary, not evolutionary? That sounds great to me. Lets see some real innovation.
OTOH, Touchscreens have been around for a while. Might make it harder for Apple to keep a lid on multitouch technology since it is a natural evolution of touch screen.
Hopefully the US will completely abandon software “patents” as they are inherently “evil”. They are patents on IDEAS not on specific implementations of an idea.
I cannot patent a “time machine” and collect money from the first person who comes up with a method of actually creating and manufacturing one. But if I figured out how one could be built I could patent that specific implementation, but it would not cover a completely different method of building a time machine if someone else figured out an alternative to my method.
What makes software patents so horrendous and disgusting and evil is that they do not require a specific implementation but rather a broad general “idea” no matter how that method is achieved.
There should be absolutely no such thing as software patents. They fly in the face of logic and reason and instead of protecting the advancement of human achievement they greatly retard it. Only allow patents on very specific implementations.
Judge Crater,
Even in the absence of software patents, MS would have to rewrite OS X to work with generic PCs, as they could not just grab Apples program off the shelf and sell it as is. Software patents just prevent people from using the same ideas in their own code.
“multitouch technology since it is a natural evolution of touch screen.”
there’s so much prior art with Multitouch that Apple can’t patent it.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Microsoft Inc. denied today that it had sent an opertative back in time to prevent its arch rival, Apple Inc., from patenting a time machine before Microsoft did . . . does . . . will.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs will make the allegation tomorrow when he steps for the first time into the Insanely Great, for the maiden voyage of the new iClock.
Apple sold its one-millionth iClock last week, but Jobs went back two years tomorrow at 9 a.m. Pacific Time to present himself with the introductory model.
The federal government said next week that it still plans to investigate what Microsoft calls Apple’s bookkeeping shennanigans — iClocks that for two years have been flying off the shelves though it hasn’t been invented yet.
Microsoft’s late entry into this particular market has been viewed with some suspicion by Apple’s legions of fans who point out that Bill Gates disappeared next month in an iClock but returned last year in what they charge as an ugly “knock-off” that users can’t buy, only rent, and that Microsoft calls the ME II.
Apple and Microsoft officials will decline to return our calls tomorrow seeking comment.
Upstart Amiga’s CEO, Abraham Lincoln, told us yesterday by telegraph tomorrow that any statement by him would be made through his company’s new public-relations secretary, Al Gore.
“Software patents just prevent people from using the same ideas in their own code.”
And copyright still protects your work (not the idea, the actual implementation) even if you have no patents.
Yesterday is an enigma
Today is a question mark
Tomorrow, an enigma wrapped by a question mark
PatentTroll:
“”multitouch technology since it is a natural evolution of touch screen.”
there’s so much prior art with Multitouch that Apple can’t patent it.”
Don’t count on it. Depending on what the prior art is and how Apple implemented it, they could have very compelling patents on it and how it works.
Apple could have bought the original multi-touch screen patents. We know they didn’t develop multi-touch in-house.
To say they didn’t develop multi touch assumes that *all* implementations of multiple simultaneous touch interfaces are identical and you can’t patent specific implementations of it. I’m not a patent lawyer but I suspect this is not correct.
@ Time Wars
You make my Brain hurt.
“I’m not a patent lawyer but I suspect this is not correct.”
You are correct, but what has been shown on the iPhone so far has already been done or suggested by others so doesn’t qualify.
What really pisses me off:
I already wrote that Time Wars.
Clearly, you read that on the Labor Day MDN special column, and decided to post it back here last month. Today.
See what ChrissyOne will writ tomorrow later in this thread… a few hours ago.
Informercials-
I thought that we couldn’t use the “enigma” word because it offended some folks.
Please be considerate and protect feellings.
-Nappy
I looked up the word “enigma” after I read your post Gonzales, and I found that it refers to an old early 1900s German system of encrypting messages that was cracked by some Polish scientists just prior to WWII and allowed the Allies to decode top secret Nazi communications.
The term itself means “odd” or “unusual” person or thing. Something that falls outside of the normal standard patterns.
How on earth is it an offensive word? I can’t find any reference to it being offensive in any context.
I thought that we couldn’t use the “enigma” word because it offended some folks
That “enigma” could offend someone is per se the greatest enigma of all.
It is not like we are talking about smegma.
You cannot copy or use someone else’s word verbatim without acknowledging the author. If you doing so in order to make money, then you need the authors permission. (Copyright)
Same case in music and lyrics. (Copyright)
Software is written code to instruct a computer to perform specific tasks. Copy that code without permission or a licence and you will be sued if found out. (Copyright)
Patents apply as I understand to hardware and the method by which the hardware was built. If you built a kit that did the same as another but the process by which you came to your version is entirely different and no part of the process is similar to another, then you will be granted a patent. (I believe)
Ps. In order that your patent application succeeds, you must lay out in writing each step you made in accomplishing your product, all notes and sub notes of the entire process and a technical diagram of the product, as you would find in a Haynes manual.
Any thoughts, ideas and influences that led to your invention are also helpful in proving your ownership. None of those processes must be in the public domain if you are a company. If you are an individual, your product should not have been seen by anyone else apart from yourself at the point at which you present a patant claim. (I believe, I could be wrong as these things change)
Spelling! Spelling!!!
TwilightMoon:
This is not criticism, but either you have no imagination, don’t read the news, or you are not an American if you don’t understand what Gonzales was saying.
I have an imagination (quite a good one), I read the online news (sometimes), and I am an American; and I am very confused about why Enigma could be offensive. Would someone mind explaining or pointing me to a link, cause this is going to bother me
I got the nappy joke, but have to admit I didn’t get the enigma reference either. I suspect either someone is way more-political-than-thou or is bsing us.
People who use “enigma” to niggle a non-existent controversy are too niggardly to explain why.