Patenting non-tech ideas may get harder

In 2008, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office awarded Ultramercial with Patent No. 7,346,545, describing the process in which a consumer, rather than paying for a product like a video, may “choose to receive such products after viewing and/or interacting with an interposed sponsor’s or advertiser’s message.”

Ultramercial had applied for the patent in 2001. Last week, the Supreme Court set aside an earlier ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that had allowed Ultramercial’s patent and permitted the firm to pursue a lawsuit against WildTangent. The high court told the federal circuit to reconsider its decision.

Michelle Quinn POLITICO.com

Google Cleared in Oracle Patent Suit

"In a unanimous decision, 10 jurors agreed that Oracle had not proven any of its claims that Google infringed on Java software patents in the Android operating software for smartphones and tablet computers."

From IndustryWeek

Other comments

"I find it refreshing that in this trial, both the Judge and jury proved to be much smarter than the lawyers. Thompson and others on the jury asked pretty good questions, especially considering most had no technical background at all. The judge (the Hon. William Alsup) revealed he was something of a developer himself and scoffed at some of Oracle’s arguments about the mysterious invention known as the “range check”. If you ask me, all software patent trials should be held in California from now on instead of East Texas."

Ed Burnette on ZDNet

Sydney IP Forum Software Patents - IP Australia

Event sponsored by  the Australian Government's IP Australia.

 Do software patents encourage or hinder innovation?

 

IP Australia invites you to attend the IP Forum at Sydney Marriott Hotel on 16 May 2012 to hear Australian Inventor, Ric Richardson speak about his experiences with the patents system. Ric’s epic battle with Microsoft was recently resolved in an out of court settlement with royalties on an estimated turnover of US$19 billion for its XP and Office software.

 

Other speakers include; Ben Sturmfels, principle of Sturm (a free software development agency), and Philip Spann, Deputy Commissioner of Patents at IP Australia.

 

This free forum includes lunch and the opportunity to ask questions, and network with IP professionals, industry representatives and members of IP Australia’s Executive. Journalists are welcome.

IP Australia

Where are the jobs? Ask the patent trolls.

The President is mistaken—at least when it comes to the patent system as it relates to software patents. These patents—and the patent system—aren't creating innovation, they are inhibiting it and, by extension, job creation.

[...]

repeat patent plaintiffs — “those who sue eight or more times on the same patents…are responsible for a sizeable fraction of all patent lawsuits.” Indeed, 106 out of roughly 1 million patents (or .0001 percent) in force were responsible for more than 10 percent of all patent assertions. This isn’t based on the strengths of the patents; many of these are among the weakest and least defensible

Full story at The Washington Post

Software Patent Searching Doesn't Scale

Nathan Myhrvold, the Microsoft veteran who founded the patent-trolling giant Intellectual Ventures, is right that patent infringement is rampant among software firms. But in demanding that this infringement stop, Myhrvold isn't just declaring war on what he regards as Silicon Valley's patent-hostile culture. He's declaring war on the laws of mathematics. The legal research required for all software-producing firms to stop infringing patents would cost more than the entire revenue of the software industry. Even if firms were willing to pay the bill, there simply aren't enough patent lawyers to do the work. Firms infringe software patents because they don't have any other choice. [...] Why is software different from real estate? In a new paper, we argue the fundamental difference is a matter of scalability: how much effort it takes to discover who owns an invention—or a piece of land—as the number of patents or land parcels increases. Property rights in land scale well because parcels exist in relatively well-defined locations on a two-dimensional plane. County officials take advantage of this fact to store records in a predictable order (or, more recently, to build databases searchable by geographical location). Geographical locations serve as an "index" for real property claims, so record-keepers can find any specific file quickly no matter how many files there are.
From Ars Technica

IP: Revenge of the Humans—Defending Business Method Patents

From last August Inside Counsel:

"If you can practice the claimed method without the claimed machine, then the claimed machine is irrelevant and the claimed method isn’t patentable." ... "The next time your company stares down the barrel of a software or business method patent, ask if the claimed method can be performed by a human being without the claimed machine. You might need to be a Kasparov to do it, but that’s still checkmate against the plaintiff"

NASA to auction off software patents

The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) has announced plans to auction off a number of its advanced software patents at the fifteenth ICAP Ocean Tomo IP Auction in California. Originally developed for control of satellite systems and other mission specific needs, these patent lots have a number of potential applications in software development, robotics, telecommunications, utilities, smart grids, wireless sensor networks, quantitative finance and cyber security. Patent lots fall into three categories: automated software generation, autonomic computing architectures and autonomic management of environmental monitoring systems FromComputerworld Other reports at PC Advisor and Techworld.

Software patents in Israel

Michael Factor writes in his blog The IP Factor:

"The long awaited guidelines regarding the patentability of software inventions in Israel have finally been published by the Israel Patent Authority.

In brief, it appears that the term ‘industrial application’ as required by section 3 of the Israel Patent Law 1967 may be fulfilled by patents in any field of technology."

Full article at the IP Factor

After the list of allowed inventions are by several examples of what is patentable.

And this is why Apple doesn't want to settle Android patent lawsuits | ZDNet

Deutsche Bank’s Chris Whitmore believes that a settlement would give Apple some $10 in revenue for each Android device sold, equating to some $35 to Apple’s share price. However, if Apple was able to capture 25% of Android future growth through halting distribution and forcing feature removal, that could be worth some $300 per extra handset sold, or a whopping $261 on top of Apple’s already buoyant share price.

Read more at ZDNet

Position of Software Patents in UK

The Law Information Portal of India has published this article on the main patent law in the UK, the Patent Act, 1977, and decisions regarding patentability of software under this law and the European convention on patents. The essay seems to be written as a background briefing for the benefit of non-UK lawyers. Read more

Infographic: The Problem With Patents

The Frugal Dad blog posted this infographic on software patents it discusses some facts of the patent industry and how it’s changed as software, technology, and the internet have developed.

Judge rules on contested evidence in Oracle-Google case

CIO Magazine is reporting that in a preliminary ruling before the Java IP trial, significant evidence both sides attempted to introduce has been ruled eitherr admisable or inadmissible.

Oracle and Google have both won and lost in a number of their efforts to keep evidence out of the upcoming trial in Oracle's lawsuit against Google over the Android mobile OS. At issue is whether Google has infringed on Oracle's intellectual property rights by using Java without properly licensing it.

CIO Magazine

I can only assume the witnesses will be required to swear "I promise to tell the such parts of truth as judge permits and nothing like the truth."

Microsoft patent on PVR Functions in Game Console

It completely eludes me how this isn't prior art. Microsoft's Xbox is a PC and PCs have been able to record digital video in the background for a long long time. Myth TV comes to mind.

A digital video recorder (DVR) application running alongside a television client component allows users to record media content on the gaming console. The DVR application also integrates itself with the console menu. Once integrated, users can record media content while playing games. Alternatively, users can record content when the gaming console is turned off.

Gizmodo UK

Canadian Patent Office Allows Amazon.com’s “one-click” Patent

The issuance of the “one-click” patent may be just what Amazon.com and the [Canadian] Patent office wanted. However, for members of the public who wanted the law related to business method and software patents clarified, it is a missed opportunity to have the Supreme Court weigh in on this critically important issue.

Barry Sookman

If you think software patents are bad enough.

Software patents are not the worst thing imaginable.

You've mentioned "one-click patent" - but it's not software patent, it's UI patent. UI patents are worse then software patents: where software patents are "useful in theory but not in practice" these (as well as business patents) are unconditionally evil.

They give no disclosure gain at all (because by necessity they are disclosed when they are actually used ..

[Read more at LWN.net]

FOSS developer's campaign against software patents moves ahead

Melbourne developer Ben Sturmfels is sure of one thing: his campaign to end them in their entirety will succeed in the long run.

He began with the collection of signatures last year to submit to federal parliament. In February, Sturmfels' petition was accepted by the government's Petitions Committee, in three batches. "Collecting 1000 signatures on paper is a hard task and a huge one in terms of the amount of paper needed," he said with a grin.

He argues that patents are not necessary to encourage innovation in their industry, that the term of a patent (20 years) is too long, and that the cost involved (in avoiding infringing patents, and defending against patent lawsuits) is not viable, particularly for small to medium-sized businesses.

Full Story at iTWire

Apple gets U.S. ban on HTC Android phones sales... for now | ZDNet

Apple gets U.S. ban on HTC Android phones sales... for now | ZDNet: This particular junk patent covers clicking a phone number on a phone list and your smartphone automatically dialing that number!

British Telecom joins patent attack on Google Android

BT joins patent attack on Google Android - Telegraph:

"In a broad complaint, BT claims that Google Maps, Google Music, Google Search, Android Market, location-based advertising and the Google social network all infringe its intellectual property. [...] “BT brings this action to recover the just compensation it is owed and to prevent Google from continuing to benefit from BT's inventions without authorization,” the court papers say."

That patents comment, The Gameshelf

Andrew Plotkin's "The Gameshelf" blog has a posting about the difference between having an idea and having a fully expressed idea as well as a number of other musings.

"The basis of our patent system is ensuring that innovators get paid." I came back with "That's the goal, not the basis", which was probably overcondensed. I was trying to point out that goals are not results. If the existing system isn't doing its job, the system is broken. In theory, you can't patent a naked idea; you have to put it in some kind of physical form. In practice, the boundaries between "idea" and "invention" have gotten very fuzzy; the physical form of software (or process, or a procedure) is irrelevant. Okay, that makes my quote fuzzy as well. The question, as several tweeters have pointed out, is obviousness -- or, the difference between the easy part and the hard part.

Full posting

US heavies NZ on software patents

Paul Matthews wrote this opinion piece for The National Business Review:

A pending international trade treaty could override a recent New Zealand law change that excluded software from patent protection. All the political parties supported the controversial change.

But the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) could see the US pro-patent view override our local law makers.

Full Article