Federal Court Open Door to Business Method Patents
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It begins…
Apparently, they feel they work so damn great down South…
RE: realyst
Yep, it’s all Microsoft vs. Apple vs. Oracle vs. Google down there.
Not in making better products, of course, but to see who can acquire the most software patents to sue and extort each other with.
Mind you, all that the FCC said was that the Commissioner erred in her rejection of the patent due to a policy that business processes are not patentable; they did not grant the patent, they ruled only on the fact that there is not class exemption for business processes. The ordered re-examination means that the patent may still be rejected due to “obviousness”.
This leaves the door open to the patenting of things like new marketing methods or “quality” methodologies. Each patent application would then still have to go through other tests to see if it was patentable.
Patents are used as hunting licences south of the border. Software companies are moving operations out of the US to try to avoid the madness. The government should be ready with legislation to step in and stop this before it leaves us completely screwed.
Sarcasticly … Serious
“Anything under the sun” is not patentable, but surely “anything under the sun, made by man is”. It is funny how on one hand we claim that we are not doing so well in the e-commerce and e-business sector and on the other hand we make it easier to patent software. No wonder developing countries are expected to enforce stronger patent regimes, following this logic I really believe it is for their own good…