http://www.itexaminer.com/us-court-throws-out-most-software-patents.aspx
Much of the patent portfolio of some of the world's biggest software companies has become worthless overnight, thanks to a ruling yesterday by the US patent court. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) in Washington DC has decided that in the future, instead of automatically granting a patent for a business practice, there will be a specific testing procedure to determine how patentable is that process. The decision is a nearly complete reversal of the court's controversial State Street Bank judgement of 1998, which started the stampede for patenting business practices. Randy Lipsitz, a patent specialist at Kramer Levin in New York, said the ruling is likely to hit certain industries very hard, especially insurance, banking, accounting, and software. Wooohooo! Chris...... -- "As we open our newspapers or watch our television screens, we seem to be continually assaulted by the fruits of Mankind's stupidity." -Roger Penrose
