Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> House Committee OKs Patent Bill
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
>| House Committee Approves Patent Reform Legislation Favored by Software
>| Companies
> `----
>
> http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070718/patent_reform_congress.html?.v=4
>
> Now America should make another amendment that supports the realisation
> that "Software Companies" are not welcomed at the USPTO. Software cannot be
> patented.
It looks like it could be a step forward, and I particularly liked the
remarks towards the end noting that "methods" shouldn't be patentable
(the tax avoidance ones, I suspect :-), but if business methods were no
longer allowed in the US, then pretty much all the software patents fall
down. Qualcomm might continue fighting, but I don't think that anyone
else would. The drugs companies are into patenting physical things,
rather than mathematics, which is, I suppose, a little better. Also,
they do have a stronger argument, in that they probably are spending
vast amounts of cash on their research, whereas most software patents
are trivial to the extreme.
Still, however you hack this, software patents do *not* apply outside of
the US, Canada, Mexico and Australia.
--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
| Cola faq: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/linux/advocacy/faq-and-primer/ |
| Cola trolls: http://colatrolls.blogspot.com/ |
| My (new) blog: http://www.thereisnomagic.org |
|
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