Software patents are crumbling, thanks to the Supreme Court
Most of these are district court cases. The USA has a patent appeals court, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit [0], that takes all patent appeals nationally. The doctrine about "do it on a computer" patents will be formed by three judge panels chosen randomly from that appeals court, not by the districts.But the very good sign from these cases is most were decided on the pleadings. That means there was no expensive discovery or claim construction procedure, much less a jury trial. A decision on the pleadings means that even in the best possible light, the patent holder doesn't have a case at all according to the judge. There is no cheaper way to dispose of an expensive and lengthy lawsuit. And a rule that can be disposed of on pleadings is exactly what reformers wanted from the Supreme Court.The CAFC has seen a few of these and so far Taranto and Hughes, two of the newest Obama judges, have acquitted themselves superbly. We have well written and conclusive decisions from them calling the whole "do it on a computer" mess ineligible.We'll have to wait and see how the more enthusiastic radicals for patenting everything influence the outcomes. Three judges that wanted to hand a monopoly on the centuries old, trillion dollar financial settlement industry to Alice even when no technological procedures were disclosed in their patent are still on the court: Moore, O'Malley, and Newman. Lourie was the swing vote in that decision and also says that Ultramercial [1] should have a monopoly on interstitial internet advertising because they wrote the century old idea up with 'on the internet' tacked onto the end. There are eleven judges and one empty slot on the CAFC so those four make up a large minority that will likely press for "on a computer" patents to come back.Chief Judge Prost, Judge Dyk, and the three new Obama appointees seem much more rational and good for our industry. We should hope they are the ones who shape the interpretation of Alice in the future.And remember that while "on a computer" patents -- the ones that describe a conventional business and add "on a computer" or "on the internet" without anything added to known technology -- are falling, lots of damaging software patents are still out there and apparently unharmed. The h.264 and mp3 patents that block open and free media players and browsers are still functioning. The ZFS and JFS patents that make BTRFS illegal are still out there. The compiler and VM patents from IBM, Sun, and others that hang over the head of anyone who writes either still exist. The long filename patents and others that Microsoft uses to tax Android are still taxing. The UI patents on smartphones that drive the smartphone wars are still driving them. New patents on computer vision, deep neural nets, machine learning, GPU computation, multithreading techniques, and more are being granted every tuesday.Lucky for us, software patents that are on actual software are a lot less lucrative than the ones on business "on a computer." Even in smartphone litigation, most of the money verdicts depend on the shape of the box a smartphone comes in; don't steal the idea of a rounded rectangle and your lawsuit will be for tens of millions instead of billions. Still, every kind of software patent is bad, dishonest, and harmful to our industry and progress. They all need to go.[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals_...[1] http://www.patentdocs.org/2013/06/ultramercial-inc-v-hulu-ll...