Submitted by “US patent law will be put in the dock later today (18 April) when the highest court in the land considers a case brought by the world’s biggest software company, Microsoft. But at stake is more than just the $290m judgement that a small Canadian firm, i4i, secured against Microsoft for patent infringement. Legal experts have said that the outcome of the US Supreme Court hearing will decide how patent laws protect exclusive technology and impact innovation.”
I’m as curious as anyone else about the outcome.
However, I am extremely doubtful that the supreme court would send a message as clear as “software patents are unenforceable under US patent law”.
If anything, I suspect the trial, if it even goes to conclusion, will pivot around a technicality very specific to the case which will not be of much help for software patent cases in general.
It’s up to congress to write the laws, the courts can only try to interpret their intent.
Never the less, a loss for microsoft would be a loss for everyone else too.
What’s on trial here is actually the burden of proof required to strike down a patent. If Microsoft wins this case it won’t be the end of patents, it will just lessen the amount of evidence needed to refute one in court. This helps Microsoft in the i4i case, but will also be a step in the right direction for patent reform as a whole.
Why can’t they just use the common sense approach? For example, if a particular concept is generic enough that it ends up being owned by a patent troll (meaning, somebody who has no interest in actually using the patents for anything except lawsuits), I think we can probably deduce that the patent itself is too generic.
Edited 2011-04-20 00:34 UTC
Common sense when interpreting law? Surely you jest!
Ironically common sense is outlawed in common legal system… It seems it migrated to civil legal system.
Unfortunately this is an incredibly simple minded approach to what is a very difficult problem.
First what is “generic enough?” The concept of “obvious” is a difficult one to tackle because, in hindsight, most inventions are obvious. I mean, look at the light bulb, it’s just heating a filament with electricity until it glows. Very obvious, but was it obvious at the time in which it was invented? That is the question that the patent examiner is looking at, and it can be a very difficult question to answer.
Second your definition of a patent troll is meaningless. Most patent trolls don’t file patents, they buy them from (mostly failed) companies. Companies that, at the time, likely had every intention of implementing their patent. Unfortunately, even companies with the best ideas fail. So, does a perfectly good patent become invalid just because a “patent troll” buys it? Does that patent become valid again if someone buys the patent troll and implements the patent? Companies like IBM and Microsoft employ large research groups and many of the patents awarded to those groups are never going to end up in a shipping product, does that mean that Microsoft and IBM are patent trolls?
And, fyi, i4i is not a patent troll.
i4i, unlike most people outside the phone industry bringing patent suits these days, actually uses technologies reelevant to their patent, and sells products using it. If I recall correctly, it’s something about keeping style information seperate from content inside an xml container. They’ve specifically said that the Open Document format doesn’t infringe on their patent, but that according to Microsoft’s own secifications, OOXML does (so it’s not the what but the how, that i4i are grumpy about). This is a high stakes game for Microsoft. Either they lose and have to pay the dues to i4i and then either license off them, make a new format, or (ghasp!) embrace open standards and go to ODF; or they win, and suddenly every patent they (and everyone else) hold is much easier to invalidate. A win here would make it harder for them to strangle competition, but it would help them and their new friend, Nokia, in the mobile space. Knock on effect is the anti-android mud Apple slings at the OEMs won’t stick so easily, and that’ll make Windows Phone’s market infiltration harder, slightly.
Since when was the light bulb obvious? No, obvious is when an SME looks at the application and says “We’ve been doing this for years.” and non-obvious is “Hm… I didn’t think about that in that way.”
Examples of non-obvious – using tubes for increased surface area of the boiler in a steam engine; using a tungsten filament and vacuum for a light bulb; using capacitor, inductor and vacuum tube for radio wave communications; cyclone vacuum cleaner.
The middle ground, where ideas are created all the time and given a challenge to an SME will result in the same solution – using a device that moves in a 2D space to move a pointer on a 2D screen(a.k.a mouse*), using a supplementary swipe gesture to unlock a device, Philip’s “pop-out-menu”, minimising windows with animation, object-oriented (anything you want) system.
Very bluntly obvious patent – outsourcing patent.
*- Though the mouse itself, as a electro-mechanical device, is a very much patentable invention.
They do not make law, they interpret the meaning of the laws passed by congress and the meaning of the constitution. This gives them a lot of power and in a dystopia, they could rule that the first amendment allowed for people to be jailed for speech that the president decided was anti-american. So, while they do not make law, they can bend the meaning of law to what ever they wish. It is but for the wisdom of the President(s) and Senators who make and confirm the nominations to the court respectivly that protects the country from such ridiculous possibilities.
Also… there is no trial here… this is an appeal and once you successfully get a hearing by the supreme court you do not decide to settle. They are not required to take your case, so you better not back out.
I’m confused here. Isn’t it the intention for the SCOTUS to rule in broader terms? I.e once and for all on the matter in general – like abortion in Roe v. Wade. And leave the technical minutia to the lower courts that are less loaded with cases.
The Supreme Court’s purpose is to rule on cases that involve constitutionality issues, that can’t be settled by a lower court. Also notable is that they tend to issue limited rulings, and only overturn federal statutes if they have too. If the Supreme Court can find a way to resolve a specific case without tackling the constitutionality of a given law, they will.