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Corrections here
Authored by: feldegast on Saturday, September 15 2012 @ 05:10 AM EDT
So they can be fixed

---
IANAL
My posts are ©2004-2012 and released under the Creative Commons License
Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0
P.J. has permission for commercial use.

[ Reply to This | # ]

News picks
Authored by: feldegast on Saturday, September 15 2012 @ 05:12 AM EDT
Please make links clickable

---
IANAL
My posts are ©2004-2012 and released under the Creative Commons License
Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0
P.J. has permission for commercial use.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Off topic
Authored by: feldegast on Saturday, September 15 2012 @ 05:13 AM EDT
Please make links clickable

---
IANAL
My posts are ©2004-2012 and released under the Creative Commons License
Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0
P.J. has permission for commercial use.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Comes transcribing
Authored by: feldegast on Saturday, September 15 2012 @ 05:14 AM EDT
Thank you for your support

---
IANAL
My posts are ©2004-2012 and released under the Creative Commons License
Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0
P.J. has permission for commercial use.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Simple question
Authored by: PolR on Saturday, September 15 2012 @ 05:51 AM EDT
Why do we need the Federal Circuit?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Simple question, where does defiance to the SCotUS stand, legally?
Authored by: kuroshima on Saturday, September 15 2012 @ 08:01 AM EDT
This is a serious question, can a lower court, like a
district or federal court simply disagree and ignore Supreme
Court rulings, legally?

I understand that they will always try to nibble around the
edges, slowly eroding the verdict, but this looks more like a
frontal assault. Can they do that? What measures can the
SCotUS take when this happens? Is there any official
reprimand that they can take?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Who Appointed these Clowns?
Authored by: BuggyFunBunny on Saturday, September 15 2012 @ 09:43 AM EDT
From the Right Wing Presidents, by any chance?

[ Reply to This | # ]

The Federal Circuit judges would fail at computer programming
Authored by: jheisey on Saturday, September 15 2012 @ 10:15 AM EDT
The federal circuit judges responsible for this judgement would be failures if
they instead worked as computer programmers. They appear incapable of logical
thought.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Can SCOTUS give a spanking?
Authored by: kawabago on Saturday, September 15 2012 @ 01:49 PM EDT
Maybe that will finally get through to the appeals court.

[ Reply to This | # ]

This could turn out good
Authored by: jvillain on Saturday, September 15 2012 @ 02:27 PM EDT
The harder the Federal circuit pushes in one direction the more likely it is
that Supreme Court will push back. There is nothing that will force the Supreme
Court to take a hard look at the over all effect of all this like the junior
league gone wild. We may finally get some real harsh precedents in place.

There is no chance that the SC will bow to the will of the Federal circuit
because that would make the CS impotent not just in this instance but all and
most of the Judges on the SC already have woken up to the madness that has been
unleashed.

It sucks that we will have to waste another year getting to a better place but
the odds are that we will be left better off after the dust settles than we are
now. At least until the politicians weigh in and make it a mess again.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Yep, Gene did predict this
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, September 15 2012 @ 08:49 PM EDT
And it is a huge issue, and not just with software. Take Johnson Matthey's patent on a continuously regenerating trap ( PDF brochure here), which locked up a natural process. No one in the industry had the money to take this to court, and so the patent was considered in the United States at least, valid until it expired.

I could explain the exact mechanism of how the device works, but most people here probably wouldn't understand the chemistry involved.

The simple explanation is that all that JM did was move the production of NO2 by oxidation of NO with O2 slightly upstream in the exhaust system. Every device produced before the CRT patent was issued produced NO2 in the exact same way. The reason that production of NO2 (which is approximately 10 times more poisonous than carbon monoxide - check the OSHA exposure limits if you don't believe me) is important is that it reacts with C6 (elemental carbon) and the results of the reaction are N2 and CO2, which would have been the final result in atmosphere anyway.

Wayne

http://madhatter.ca

[ Reply to This | # ]

I had my comment lined up.
Authored by: Ian Al on Sunday, September 16 2012 @ 05:16 AM EDT
Then I read the opinion of Judge Prost and he says pretty much what I was going to say.

If I have understood the invention, it substitutes the principle of exchange of contracts by two conveyancing solicitors with a single, shared, trusted legal entity. Using two trusted solicitors is how houses have been sold in the UK since before I was... since before computers were... for a very, very long time.

I pulled this from the majority opinion:
These patents cover a computerized trading platform for exchanging obligations in which a trusted third party settles obligations between a first and second party so as to eliminate “settlement risk.”
The question I would ask is whether a computer is the trusted third party or whether that would be a person? If it is a person (it would be a qualified solicitor in UK conveyancing) then the invention is to use one or more computers instead of quill pen, ink and face to face meetings. It is a legal financial process using computers to allow people to carry out the steps of the process. The computers are not required for reasons of speed, legal certitude or personal trust.

If a computer is the trusted third party, then there must be a set of claims about that computer that engenders that trust, for it to be an invention. If the computer is owned by either party then no such trust will be engendered. Does the patent make that clear? If the computer is trusted because it is owned and operated by a trusted third party then it is the third party and not the computer which is trusted.

As Judge Prost said:
The Court once again iterated that “the prohibition against patenting abstract ideas cannot be circumvented by attempting to limit the use of the formula to a particular technological environment.” Prometheus, (quoting Bilski,)
As PJ said, the abstract idea of getting one or more trusted third parties to enact a legal or a financial transaction is prior art and it is prior art from long before the writing of the US Constitution. It is an abstract idea that does not stop being an abstract idea by being narrowed to a particular subset of financial transactions (see, Bilski).

Further narrowing to a particular technological environment does not stop it being an abstract idea (again, see Bilski).

If the abstract idea required a computer of a specific form to create a trusted third party then that might be a patentable machine. However, putting ones trust in a computer rather than the programmer and the computer owner and operator does not constitute a discovery of innovation: it is a discovery of stupidity.

Once the narrowing to financial transactions and then further to on-a-computer are dismissed as being without innovation, 'the application, considered as a whole, contain[s] no patentable invention' (Flook).

Benson is a clear parallel:
The concept of hedging, described in claim 1 and reduced to a mathematical formula in claim 4, is an unpatentable abstract idea, just like the algorithms at issue in Benson and Flook . Allowing petitioners to patent risk hedging would pre-empt use of this approach in all fields, and would effectively grant a monopoly over an abstract idea.

Petitioners’ remaining claims are broad examples of how hedging can be used in commodities and energy markets. Flook established that limiting an abstract idea to one field of use or adding token postsolution components did not make the concept patentable. That is exactly what the remaining claims in petitioners’ application do. These claims attempt to patent the use of the abstract idea of hedging risk in the energy market and then instruct the use of well-known random analysis techniques to help establish some of the inputs into the equation. Indeed, these claims add even less to the underlying abstract principle than the invention in Flook did, for the Flook invention was at least directed to the narrower domain of signaling dangers in operating a catalytic converter.
The Alice patent does not even reduce the abstract idea of a trading transaction to a formula that needs the computer for the purpose of speed of analysis. The Alice patent does not achieve anything by using the computer other than as a platform for the transaction. It's a bit like buying something on the internet.

The concept of hedging, described in claim 1 and reduced to a mathematical formula in claim 4, is an unpatentable abstract idea, just like the algorithms at issue in Benson and Flook . Allowing petitioners to patent risk hedging would pre-empt use of this approach in all fields, and would effectively grant a monopoly over an abstract idea.

---
Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid!

[ Reply to This | # ]

I think part of the problem is that the SC has been straddling the fence
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, September 16 2012 @ 06:56 AM EDT
I think part of the problem is that the SC has been
straddling the fence on this important issue, they have not
come out loud, strong and clear on software patents, also on
patents on just abstract methods.

This is suspect to me, and its was actually predictable that
this was going to happen. And I am sure the SC foresaw it,
after all: these gentlemen are surely NOT naive.

I also remember reading somewhere the SC consider the actual
making of policy a matter for congress, not something they
see as their jobs. So what they in effect did was give this
opening to the Federal Circuit, not sure that they intended
it, but they must have seen it coming.

The next question that the SC are going to have to ask
themselves however is: if it is the Federal Circuits job to
make rulings that promote ignorance of the law. And if
they really can afford to tolerate that kind of outright
defiance.

It may unfortunately be just a political game strategy that
they are playing.

The gut feeling I am getting is that the judicial system is
corrupted.

[ Reply to This | # ]

speachless...
Authored by: jacks4u on Sunday, September 16 2012 @ 11:56 AM EDT
From Googles Amicus brief...
At least for high-tech companies like amici, the greatest source of uncertainty today is not Mayo; it is whether any given panel of this Court will apply the Mayo standard and guideposts.
...

[ Reply to This | # ]

The Moby Dick Support Device
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 17 2012 @ 06:29 AM EDT
Ah, the good old Moby Dick Support Device, based on a comment from BitOBear

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • Careful now! - Authored by: Ian Al on Monday, September 17 2012 @ 11:21 AM EDT
    • BitOBear - Authored by: Wol on Monday, September 17 2012 @ 01:13 PM EDT
    • Careful now! - Authored by: cbc on Wednesday, September 19 2012 @ 08:40 PM EDT
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