So there was an interesting Federal Circuit Court ruling that, arguably just invalidated all software patents... and it turns out the inventor of the patent in question pretty much feels the same as I do on the whole US software patent situation.
Personally, I like his proposed remedies... sometimes I get so disgusted with the system that I want all software patents abolished, but I will concede from time to time that it is a more complicated issue than that and that there might be legitimate software patent out there.
My biggest issue has always been with the lifespan of software patents... the standard 25-year lifespan for a patent is perfectly legitimate for most industries, but the software world moves way too fast for that. Technologies are outdated in as a little as three years.... 25-years is an eternity in the software world.
Case in point... a software patent that expires in 2011 would have been granted in 1986. What was the state of computing in 1986? Here's an article that tells you just that.
We recently wrote about a surprising Federal Circuit (CAFC) ruling that might open the door to invalidating a lot of software patents. We received an an interesting comment on the post a few days later from John Pettitt:
So I was thinking - great they invalidated software patents, lets see what crappy patent written by an idiot they picked to do it - then I realized the idiot in question was me :-)
Not sure how I feel about this.
John - inventor of the patent in question.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment