decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more...
decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.


You won't find me on Facebook


Donate

Donate Paypal


No Legal Advice

The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.


What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments


Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
The UK does have software patents! | 360 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
The UK does have software patents!
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, November 11 2012 @ 02:44 PM EST
Well, perhaps you could point out where i can see the decision which shows that they lost with regard to the drill bit design patent i'm nattering on about. you're better than i am, if you can, because i'm at a loss where to find it. i think we may be talking about different cases.

Re Halliburton Energy Services Inc.

18. A number of observations are important at this stage. First although the ultimate point of all this design and simulation work is no doubt to make a drill bit to the optimised design, the claim does not include the step of manufacturing a drill bit to the design. If the claim was amended to include such a feature then Mr Mitcheson accepts (I think) that it would satisfy the requirements of patentability with which this case is concerned. However Halliburton do not wish to include such a limitation.
21. … Accordingly I find that claim 1 (and its brethren) are limited to carrying out the simulations on a computer. They are computer implemented methods.
70. Approached on the correct, narrow basis, the mental act exclusion is irrelevant in this case. The claimed method cannot be performed by purely mental means and that is the end of the matter. Put another way, the contribution is a computer implemented method and as such cannot fall within the mental act exclusion.

71. That does not mean it is necessarily immune from the computer program exclusion but that is a different matter. Is it more than a computer program as such? The answer is plainly yes. It is a method of designing a drill bit. Such methods are not excluded from patentability by Art 52/s1(2) and the contribution does not fall solely within the excluded territory. Drill bit design is not a business method, nor a scheme for playing a game nor (as I have held) is this claim a scheme for performing a mental act.

72. Mr Mitcheson did submit that the method was a mathematical method. I note that Mr Thorpe did not think so. No Respondent's Notice was filed but Mr Davis was content to deal with the point in any event. I agree with Mr Thorpe. Although obviously some mathematics is involved, the contribution is not solely a mathematical method (on top of being a computer program) because the data on which the mathematics is performed has been specified in the claim in such a way as to represent something concrete (a drill bit design etc.). That is an important difference between the position in Gale and the position here. In Gale the claim was broadly drafted and it was nothing more than a mathematical method implemented on a computer.

Please, read the decision and tell me i'm wrong. i'll be happy to admit it. i'd prefer to be corrected than disillusioned and confused and not know it.

j

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details )