Software is once again unpatentable in the United States

[Matthew Woehlke]

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)

-- 
Matthew
Please do not quote my e-mail address unobfuscated in message bodies.
-- 
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