Posts Tagged: "computer related inventions"

On Monday, November 9, 2009, the United States Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the much anticipated Bilski case, which could well decide once and for all whether business methods and software remain patentable in the United States. I will be in attendance at the oral argument, which will take place after a lunch recess.

Several years after Arrhythmia, the Federal Circuit seemingly abandoned the Freeman-Walter-Abele test. Sitting en banc in Alappat the Federal Circuit did not apply the Freeman- Walter-Abele test, rather opting for the mathematical subject matter exception.

Last week I was at the Patent Office interviewing a case along with Mark Malek, who was in town from Florida to talk firm business, look for office space and interview some patent agents regarding coming to work with us.  The interviews lined up for this trip were all “Bilski-related,” in that the CAFC decision in In re Bilski was…

Without software a computer is nothing more than a box of miscellaneous pieces that can’t do much of anything. They do make nice sticky-note holders, and they collect dust extremely well, but a computer without software is about as useless as a door without a knob, a clock without hands or a car without an engine. In other words, a computer without software is completely and totally useless. It is the software that directs a computer to do unique and often wonderful things, and it is the software that provides the innovative spark, not the machine. We do nothing but an injustice to ourselves to ignore this reality.

My position is that software must be patentable, or 500 years of patent laws make no sense. The reason that software must be patentable is that software can be an inseparable part of both manufacturing processes and electronic devices. A patent for such items must crucially include the software components of the invention, or the patent would be incomplete.

The code itself and how it is written is protected via copyright, if at all, not through a patent. So when you are trying to define the invention so that it can be described adequately in a patent application you do not need to detail every language that could be used, and you do not need to provide an outline of the routines or subroutines, but what you do need to provide is enough information so that the computer programmer could translate your description into code, so you want to provide enough to allow the computer programmer to create the outline themselves, understanding that the actual approach employed by the computer programmer will be as unique as they are.