[time-nuts] HP 5335A and HP-IB (GP-IB)

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <4C567F19.2080600 at sonic.net>, Rex writes:
>  On 8/1/2010 11:08 PM, John Miles wrote:

>Sorry, John, I am not aware of  '/Bilski v. Kappos' /decision.  Care to 
>share a few words or a concise link on what it is about?

The very brief summary is that the Supreme court ruled that you cannot
patent "a way of hedging energy purchase" or other "purely abstract"
inventions.

In the ruling, which is well worth the read, the judges, together
and individually, are very sceptical of patents which do not cover
tangible stuff, and in particular affirms the day-1 patent-law
principle that "purely abstract" things, like mathematics cannot
be patented.

(http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-964.pdf)

The ruling does not directly address software patents, but it does
raise the barrier considerably with the "purely abstract" part and
several of the separate opinions seem to let it shine though that
they would love to get a pure software patent in front of them, so
they can rule against it.  This also shone through during the
arguments on Bilski.

Needless to say, this is not going to sit quietly with IBM, Microsoft,
Oracle/Sun and so on, which have invested huge sums in their
patent portefolios.

Pretty fast after the Bilski ruling, the patent appeals board took
a HP software patent which was in front of them on "prior arts"
grounds, turned it around send it back down with "according to
SCOTUS this stuff cannot be patented in the first place".

(http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/proudler.pdf)

They probably figured that software patents would end up in front
of the supremes no matter what, so they might as well speed the
process up, by kicking a big company over a patent that was as far
along in the process as possible, to make it happen sooner.

As long as the patent appeals boards ruling stands, all pure software
patents are void.

A good rule of thumb for "pure software patent" is: "If can it run
on any normal computer, like a PC, without special hardware, it
cannot be patented".


Poul-Henning

PS: Not only am I not a lawyer, I am not even an USAnian :-)

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