My hero?? All I said was,
Whatever you may think of
Judge Rader and his views on patents, there is no doubt that this statement is
legally correct.
Are you disputing the legal correctness of the
footnote that I quote?
Actually, if Judge Rader were my "hero," then
I would seem to have some very good company.
You, yourself, quoted Julie
Samuels, who filed a brief on behalf of the EFF(!):
Julie
Samuels, who participated in the case by submitting an amicus brief for EFF, is
quoted in PC World as saying that the ruling gives confusing
signals:
But Julie Samuels, an intellectual property lawyer with
the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the ruling gives little guidance to
courts on patent eligibility. While judges on the court agreed Alice's patents
weren't valid, they agreed on little else, she said.
Five judges in the
10-judge court sided with the majority opinion, while five other judges
concurred in part and dissented in part. In addition to the majority ruling,
judges filed five other comments on the case.
"We have not very much more
direction as to what's patentable," said Samuels, who filed a brief asking the
court to invalidate the Alice patents. "This ruling is all over the
place."
You also cited some articles that were
published in Groklaw some time ago in support of the following
proposition:
... What they don't understand yet, but we'll keep
explaining until they do, is that ... it's all mathematics, mathematical
manipulation of symbols, nothing more magical than that. Not that mathematics
isn't magical. It is. But it's not patentable subject
matter.
The articles you cited were:
•
Why Software is Abstract
• What Does "Software Is Mathematics" Mean?
Part 1 - Software Is Manipulation of Symbols
• What Does "Software
Is Mathematics" Mean? Part 2: A Semiotics Approach to the Patent Eligibility of
Software
• A Simpler Explanation of Why Software is Mathematics
• An Explanation of Computation Theory for
Lawyers
Yet your beloved majority opinion states,
at page 9:
For example, deciding whether or not a particular
claim is abstract can feel subjective and unsystematic, and the debate often
trends toward the metaphysical, littered with unhelpful analogies and
generalizations.
I would submit that all these Groklaw
articles probably would fall into that category. I am neither a mathematician
nor do I have a degree in that subject, but I did have more than four years of
graduate training in a field heavily steeped in mathematics and, to a lesser
extent, computation. I've read these articles. Even with my background, I have
to tell you that I think they trend "toward the metaphysical, littered with
unhelpful analogies and generalizations."
My own gut reaction is that this
case may be appealed to the Supreme Court, which might then write another case
full of unhelpful "guidance" (which might be a good reason to let the case stand
as is).
Another possibility is that it will take another completely
different case and/or an Act of Congress to resolve this issue, and that this
particular case will fall into the trash heap of unhelpful, poorly written
opinions that are of interest mainly because of their having been unhelpful and
poorly written -- not because of any landmark decision or precedent they
provide.
And all that will come of the current case may well be a patent on
methods for arguing before a court that elicit, in a single case, almost as many
different and incompatible opinions from the court as there are judges hearing
the case.
Of course, I could be wrong now, but I don't think so. It's a
jungle out there. (Thanks to Monk and Randy Newman.)
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