In my lifetime, folklore claimed abstract ideas were never patentable. That's why the patent on Matthew Cook's proof of Turing-completeness of Rule 110 seemed so outrageous . . . and which I hope will now be declared null and void. --Dan On Jun 19, 2014, at 11:54 AM, Michael Kleber <michael.kleber@gmail.com> wrote:
There is a sense in which this is a really incredible statement about the difference between the world we live in today and one of N years ago. Once upon a time, turning an abstract idea into a machine capable of executing on it required serious invention. The age of the general-purpose computer means that serious invention has already happened. Changing a way to do something into a machine which does it is simply no longer an interesting problem.
--Michael
On Thu, Jun 19, 2014 at 2:36 PM, Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> wrote:
Hopefully, today's Supreme Court decision will have the effect of slowing down substantially the issuing of bad software patents.
Simply expressing an algorithm in computer code doesn't make it patentable, unless the algorithm itself is patentable.
Abstract ideas aren't patentable, so abstract ideas embedded in computer code aren't patentable.
Judge Randall Rader, the ex-Chief of the patent court, already embarrassed by ethics violations, is spanked unanimously by the Supremes in today's opinion; he is leaving that court at the end of the month.
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-298_7lh8.pdf
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/13/us-usa-court-ip-idUSKBN0EO2OO20140...
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