Software is once again unpatentable in the United States

[Jon Ciesla]

> Valent Turkovic wrote:
>> Quote from http://www.pli.edu/patentcenter/blog.asp?view=plink&id=368 :
>>
>> Here are the highlights:
>>
>>   * The Federal Circuit rejected the that the "useful, concrete and
>> tangible
>> 	result" inquiry as being inadequate.
>>
>>   * Patentability under 101 does not depend on process steps, but rather
>> 	requires a tangible machine or transformation into a different state.
>>
>>   * *Software* *is* *once* *again* *unpatentable* *in* *the* *United*
>> *States*
>>
>>   * In order to protect what was formerly known as patentable software
>> we
>> 	will have to go back to claiming a machine that provides certain
>> 	functionality.
>>
>>   * Software patents that have been issued under the previous
>> understanding
>> 	of the law are almost certainly now worthless.
>
> Also from http://ben.klemens.org/blog/arch/00000009.htm:
>> Despite claiming that all that matters is the
>> machine-or-transformation test, the ruling also bears in mind many
>> other necessary conditions for patentability, such as the rule that a
>> patent may not “wholly pre-empt” a law of nature or principle or
>> mathematical formula. Also, if you wholly pre-empt a mathematical
>> algorithm within some narrow field of endeavor, the court rules that
>> this is still a pre-emption. I'll have a little more on this below.
>
> Note "a patent may not 'wholly pre-empt' ... a mathematical formula".
>
> ...which means all those codecs from livna/rpmfusion just became 100%
> legal, no royalty required*.
>
> (* assuming the copyright license is not an issue, of course)

I assume an "official" statement on this from Fedora/RedHat legal folk
will be forthcoming.

Unless it already has, and I missed it, which is entirely possible.

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