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The Death of Google's Patents
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| The Patent and Trademark Office has now made clear that its newly developed
| position on patentable subject matter will invalidate many and perhaps most
| software patents, including pioneering patent claims to such innovators as
| Google, Inc.
|
| [...]
|
| The logic of the PTO’s positions in Nuijten, Comiskey and Bilski has always
| threatened to destabilize whole fields of patenting, most especially in the
| field of software patents. If the PTO’s test is followed, the crucial
| question for the vitality of patents on computer implemented inventions is
| whether a general purpose computer qualifies as a “particular” machine within
| the meaning of the agency’s test. In two recent decisions announced after the
| oral arguments in the Bilski case, Ex parte Langemyr (May 28, 2008) and Ex
| parte Wasynczuk (June 2, 2008), the PTO Board of Patent Appeals and
| Interferences has now supplied an answer to that question: A general purpose
| computer is not a particular machine, and thus innovative software processes
| are unpatentable if they are tied only to a general purpose computer.
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http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2008/07/the-death-of-go.html
Yesterday:
Bar code patent invalidated, another notch on EFF's belt
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| The Electronic Frontier Foundation announced another victory for its Patent
| Busting Project last Friday, this time against NeoMedia. The company received
| a comprehensive set of patents that covered information lookups via scanned
| input.
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http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080720-bar-code-patent-invalidated-another-notch-on-effs-belt.html
Recent:
Ideas Are Everywhere... So Why Do We Limit Them?
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| Gladwell uses this to talk up what Myhrvold is doing, suggesting that
| Intellectual Ventures is really about continuing that process, getting those
| ideas out there -- but he misses the much bigger point: if these ideas are
| the natural progression, almost guaranteed to be discovered by someone sooner
| or later, why do we give a monopoly on these ideas to a single discoverer?
| Myhrvold's whole business model is about monopolizing all of these ideas and
| charging others (who may have discovered them totally independently) to
| actually do something with them. Yet, if Gladwell's premise is correct (and
| there's plenty of evidence included in the article), then Myhrvold's efforts
| shouldn't be seen as a big deal. After all, if it wasn't Myhrvold and his
| friends doing it, others would very likely come up with the same thing sooner
| or later.
|
| This is especially highlighted in one anecdote in the article, of Myhrvold
| holding a dinner with a bunch of smart people... and an attorney. The group
| spent dinner talking about a bunch of different random ideas, with no real
| goal or purpose -- just "chewing the rag" as one participant put it. But the
| next day the attorney approached them with a typewritten description of 36
| different inventions that were potentially patentable out of the dinner. When
| a random "chewing the rag" conversation turns up 36 monopolies, something is
| wrong. Those aren't inventions that deserve a monopoly.
`----
http://techdirt.com/articles/20080507/0114581051.shtml
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