Posts Tagged: "Micky Minhas"

Mark Cuban: “Get rid of all software patents”

A dim view of software patents does not make Mark Cuban unique, but his latest foray into the patent debate does provide interesting insights into his arbitrary views on innovation. Like your technophobic grandfather, Cuban seems to believe that innovators are entitled to patent rights as long as the innovations are tangible. When those innovations manifest themselves in the form of intangible software the underlying innovation is for some reason no longer entitled to patent protection. Surely Cuban has to realize that this self balancing scooter could accomplish the same exact functionality if the control logic were software based, right?

Picking winners and losers based on innovation design is unsound, unwise, and just plain stupid

On some basic level everything can be characterized as an idea. It is also all too easy for those who are not technically trained to believe, no matter how wrongly, that implementation is a trivial or ministerial act. Just monitor the windmills, if they are operating at a less than optimal level adjust them, tilt the blades a little. No big deal. Anyone could have thought of that, and a college student could have written the code over a weekend. Moreover, windmills are extremely old technology, so merely applying a computer process to something so old can’t be patent eligible.

Whether an innovation is embodied in software or hardware should be irrelevant

”Whether in a software product or to embody the invention in a hardware product, is often nothing more than a design choice. Whether an innovation is embodied in software or hardware feels like it should be irrelevant to whether or not it’s patentable. The law should be agnostic as to whether it’s embodied in software or hardware. We should let the debate be whether or not this invented concept is worthy of patent protection, whether it be on subject matter grounds or whether it be on 102 or 103 grounds. I don’t see that being discussed very often, but I think it should.”

The European technical standard as a guide for drafting software patents

”A few years ago we ramped up our foreign filings and recognized that we’re writing this one document, this one patent application for so many different audiences. We started settling in on the European technical standard as a guide for how to draft, how to cover the innovation from that vantage point, in order to try to write this document that would satisfy the USPTO as well as the EPO, Chinese Patent Office, the Japanese Patent Office, and so on. So for me, what this environment means as a practitioner has more to do with how the patent is drafted and how we capture the innovation, and not really a huge difference about what the underlying innovation is or how it’s implemented.”

Patent eligibility forum discusses examiners application of Mayo, Myriad, Alice

Drew Hirshfeld, Deputy Commissioner for Patent Examination Policy, went over the highlights of the USPTO interim guidance, explaining “first, we were able to narrow the funnel that we use to determine which claims should be analyzed for subject matter eligibility.” In this regard Hirshfeld was discussing how the USPTO modified the proposed guidance, which was initially released for comment and the guidance that was release in December 2014. In the proposed guidance from March 2014, the USPTO would have had examiners apply the patent eligibility matrix if the claims “recited or involved” a judicial exception to patent eligibility. In the final guidance, Hirshfeld explained, that the USPTO opted for “directed to” language instead, which is narrower than the expansive “recited or involved” standard.