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A look at the (mostly) positive analyses resulting from the ruling where Stevens was unable to convince a majority of his peers to pull the plug on software patents
"End Software Patents (ESP) has filed an amicus curiae brief in the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's (CAFC) rehearing of the In re Bilski case. The rehearing could lead to the elimination of patents on software.
"As opinions form about the extent to which the Court ruling impacts the patenting of software, one thing is clear. The State Street ruling that in 1998 opened the flood gates to the patenting of business methods and software has been gutted, if not technically overturned..."
Continuing our series on the In Re Bilski ruling [PDF], here is Judge Mayer's dissenting opinion as text, the one that points out how utterly damaging all business methods patents are. Also, a reader sent me this link to what I agree is the best overview of the ruling that we've seen yet, by the law firm of Ladas & Parry.
Look at this, will you? The first decision from the Board of Patents Appeals and Interferences post-Bilski to reference that US Supreme Court decision, in In Re Proudler [PDF], a ruling rejecting HP's application for a software patent, setting forth a rule stating, as I read it, as saying software is not patentable because it's an abstraction...
FSF has now filed an amicus brief in Bilski, and they too ask the Supreme Court "to affirm that software ideas are not patentable":End Software Patents (ESP) executive director Ciaran O'Riordan explained, "Every software patent is a restriction on software developers and users of computers, and there are currently 200,000 software patents in the USA.