There were 38 responses to the consultation in Australia about patentable subject matter. I’ve quickly analysed them all and below are my initial comments. There 400+ pages of writing, so I only skimmed them and I’ve surely made mistakes. There’s a copy of this analysis on the wiki at: http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Australian_consultation_responses_2009 – please add notes there to correct my analysis or to add your own.
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The Australian Government’s Advisory Council on Intellectual Property (ACIP) is performing a review of patentable subject matter. There was a public consultation, but it closed on November 13th. It seems a legislative proposal is being prepared for 2010.
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There are two phases left. There’s a phase of maybe four or five months until the ruling, and there’s a longer post-ruling phase where we may get legislative proposals or a second Supreme Court case. This is the first time in 28 years where the USA could rid itself of software development’s biggest problem, so let’s look at what we have to do over the coming months.
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I recently found a paper published in 2004 by European Schoolnet: Software Patents – A Potential Hindrance of
ICT in Education. This if the first paper I’ve found on this topic and I find it well written, so I’ve summarised it below.
Another US district court has made a ruling based on Bilski – rejecting three patents, although giving ambiguous comments about one of them. Together with two previous rulings based on Bilski, we can look at how it might be used, and what are its shortcomings.
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At Monday’s hearing (court transcript), neither party had the objective of abolishing software patents. The Bilski case is about a business method patent, so there was Mr. Jakes arguing that business methods should be patentable, and Mr. Stewart arguing that they shouldn’t. For software to be excluded, we’re relying on the judges (to whom we wrote an amicus brief, as did many others). There’re a few worrying statements, but there’s also a lot of hope.
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The US Supreme Court has very promptly posted a transcript of today’s oral hearing of the Bilski case (as pdf). I’ve made a HTML version, posted in this story. (See also ESP’s analysis)
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Reports are starting to appear from today’s hearing of the Bilski case at the US Supreme Court. I’ll keep updating as they appear.
The court transcript is now online: 08-964.pdf (and we have a text version).
With the Bilski hearing set for Monday, articles and web pages have started stringing up, so I’m collecting them here. Items from ESP, SFLC, Red Hat…
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Patently-O was kind enough to publish an editorial by ESP:
As well as the hundred comments at the bottom of the article, don’t miss the further comments on comments page 2, and more on comments page 3. The article raised quite a stir.
(See the brief; independent translations of this announcement: Spanish)
BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA — Friday, October 2, 2009 — The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today submitted an amicus curiae brief calling on the Supreme Court to affirm that software ideas are not patentable. After outlining the positive impact that the free software movement and the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) have had on computer use, the brief explains how software patents are an obstacle and a danger to software developers.
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Monday, May 4th, 2009 — End Software Patents today launched en.swpat.org, a wiki to document the case against software patents. Over 100 articles have already been started to give an idea of the scope and structure of the wiki.
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The following is the Amicus curiae brief submitted by End Software Patents regarding the European Patent Office’s referral “G 3/08″ on the interpretation of EPC Art.52.
A transcript of Ciaran O’Riordan’s ESP presentation at Libre Planet 2009, March 21st, Boston.
LWN.net interviews ESP executive director, March 11, 2009:
Yesterday, (edit: thus, 2009-02-26) Microsoft attacked free software and GNU/Linux users with software patent claims against the Tom Tom Navigator and its implementation of the FAT file system. But do they have a sword or a wet rag? There have been interesting patent rejections coming from the USPTO’s Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) since the Bilski ruling was handed down by an en banc hearing of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC). One is the rejection of one of IBM’s database query patents. It was rejected because the innovation isn’t “tied to a particular machine”. So it’s a happy coincidence that MS claims their technology is running on all sorts of devices. Foot, meet mouth.
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By organizing this information and delivering it into the hands of activists and law makers, we can form an immense tool to help existing and future campaigns around the world — Ciaran O’Riordan, Director End Software Patents.
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As opinions form about the extent to which the Court ruling impacts the patenting of software, one thing is clear. The State Street ruling that in 1998 opened the flood gates to the patenting of business methods and software has been gutted, if not technically overturned.
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BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA — April 8, 2008 — End Software Patents (ESP) has filed an amicus curiae brief in the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s (CAFC) rehearing of the In re Bilski case. The rehearing could lead to the elimination of patents on software. ESP executive director Ben Klemens said, “This is an historic opportunity to fix the US patent system, as the Bilski rehearing will directly address the boundaries of the subject matter of patents. In our brief, the End Software Patents project supports the Supreme Court’s long-held position that computer software should not be patentable, and has highlighted to the Court the real economic harm software patents cause the US economy.”
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