can you imagine if every RFC had been turned into a patent where we would be today?<p>i think this alone should be telling of how every software patent rides on the goodwill of a culture of open source and standardization that has existed for decades (when true innovation was taking place).<p>it's complete insanity that patents can be granted for inventions which rely so fundamentally on an infrastructure which could have only been built so successfully - and explicitly - without them.
IANAL, but I'm surprised by the EFF's amicus brief. A large portion of it is an enumeration of the deleterious effects of NPE "trolls", but from my understanding of the case, it's purely about establishing better guidance on what is or isn't patentable under section 101. SCOTUS seems unlikely to be moved by the pain caused by NPE's, when Congress could readily change how patent infringement or licensing works for PE's vs. NPE's if they considered it a serious problem.<p>Obviously they still got the cert, though not of the particular case they wanted.<p>I'm interested to hear how some of the much brighter legal minds on hn would handicap this case. My uneducated guess is that the patentability of software will largely survive, but the Court will try to formulate a test designed to exclude claims that would be clearly too abstract were they not "instantiated" on a computer. Something like the Amazon 1-click patent would probably survive, while the <i>Alice</i> patents would not.
Because it is not (yet) reflected on the SCOTUSblog page, here is the Order granting certiorari:<p><a href="http://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/120613.zr_4g15.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/120613.zr_4g1...</a><p>The actual link above links to a number of amicus briefs urging the court to grant (or not grant) review, and would be good reading to understand the issues in the case.<p>Links to Coverage:<p><a href="http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/12/court-to-rule-on-patent-rights/" rel="nofollow">http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/12/court-to-rule-on-patent-ri...</a><p><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/06/us-usa-court-software-idUSBRE9B50QJ20131206" rel="nofollow">http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/06/us-usa-court-softw...</a>
There needs to be more money spent on staff at the US Patent Office so they don't just rubber stamp patents and let the courts decide.<p>1) Something needs to be a true innovation to be a patent 2) The process should take a lot of man hours.<p>I don't feel either of those things happen due to shortage of staffing and a wild everything is possibly patentable.