US court throws out most software patents Microsoft has a problem
By John Oram @ Friday, October 31, 2008 4:56 AM 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. http://www.itexaminer.com/us-court-throws-out-most-software-patents.aspx http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/07-1130.pdf *********************************** * POST TO MEDIANEWS@ETSKYWARN.NET * *********************************** Medianews mailing list Medianews@etskywarn.net http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
