Back in November, we first posted about the US Supreme Court case of Bilski v. Kappos (Not Looking Good for Method/Software Patents). The Supreme Court heard oral arguments at the end of 2009, and should rule on the case in 2010.
The invention in Bilski basically was a method where information was analyzed and acted upon. Such a method has been referred to, and probably rightly so, as a pure business method. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit called into question the patentability of such business mentods, as well as software and other processes. As stated by Gene Quinn at IPWatchdog (Praying the Supremes Get Bilski Right in 2010):
So in order to kill pure business methods the Federal Circuit shot at and killed much more. In truth, what the Federal Circuit did was akin to pulling out an elephant gun to shot a fly. There has been and will continue to be enormous collateral damage unless and until the Federal Circuit Bilski debacle is fixed.
How the Supreme Court deals with the Court of Appeals’ decision in Bilski will have a profound impact on current patents and patent applications for software and other method/process patents such as medical, analytical and diagnostic processes. Gene Quinn also states in the same IPWatchdog post:
It is not at all an overstatement to say the fate of future innovation in the US rests squarely on the Supreme Court getting the Bilski ruling correct. Long ago the manufacturing jobs started leaving and they are gone and not coming back. To the extent that the US has anything other than a service economy it is thanks to intellectual property and intangible assets, and everyone who seriously considers the matter knows that the chief intangible asset for businesses is software. Just take a look at the technology sector and the companies in that space and you can’t help but notice that the major employers in the US all have one thing in common — they use, create and exploit software. Erase software patent protections and hundreds of thousands of jobs will be erased from the economy and investment dollars will go elsewhere.
- Gregg J. Lallier
I accept the idea that the U.S. economy is a service oriented one. And U.S. has a rich Intellectual Property culture… U.S. and all the world doesn’t need more protection to software patents owners, what it needs is changes to shift the level of services to the next level. Software is everywhere, software is in your cell and it is in your car too, but innovation should be achieved by increasing the quality of service that the software brings to the car user or the cell user. Innovation in the software industry will be more competitive if software patents are invalidated, then the US will use its strength in building value through service quality.