Hope for clarifying the software patent mess?
Current software patent law and policy is a disgrace. The patent office has been allowing absurd patents such as figuring out how to do something with one mouse click instead of two. Many or maybe all software patents should never have been allowed. A piece of code should be no more patentable than a solution to an algebraic equation. Certainly, there is intellectual work and maybe even insight involved but the same holds for a lot of unpatentable basic scientific research. Suppose someone could have patented the Second Law of Themodynamics or the Schroedinger Equation of quantum mechanics? I have written computer programs and I have published scientific papers without expecting to patent any of it. The idea is ridiculous yet we have the present farcical situation where someone who decides to use a linked list instead of an array can get a patent.
There are hopeful signs that maybe people are starting to recognize the danger of silly patents and how they are seriously interfering with innovation. Ars Technica has a good article about recent developments. There is a new movement, “End Software Patents”, that is trying to ban software patents entirely. As the article points out:
The patent system has traditionally excluded coverage of innate scientific truths and mathematical expressions. There is no basis in law for assuming that software methods are patentable, but some dubious legal rulings issued by the Federal Circuit after its inception in the 1980s have created legal precedents for software patentability.
It concludes:
Patent reform proposals are gaining momentum in congress, but largely fail to address the software patent issue. The ESP project’s efforts to eliminate software patents by working through the court system could have very positive results for the entire software industry by helping to put an end to the destructive gridlock and patent trolling that has increasingly stifled technological innovation in software development.
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