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Patents: US Patents Finally Become Harder to Get
A court ruling in early October suggests that the pendulum has finally begun to swing backwards away from leniency in the granting of patents. “Business-method” and abstract mentally-derived patents may become much harder to obtain. That could be good news for many software and financial-industry companies that have become subject to waves of patent infringement cases.
The new ruling suggests that business-methods are patentable only if they can be linked tangibly to a specific technology, like a computer. The Wall Street Journal quotes the judge of the case as saying that “mental processes — or processes of human thinking — standing alone aren’t patentable even if they have practical application”. Further, “the routine addition of modern electronics to an otherwise unpatentable invention” doesn’t make the idea patentable.
The size and frequency of patent awards has been growing, and the recent rulings may be a backlash against that trend.
The rulings will certainly come as welcome news to the software industry where the practice of getting patents for processes or techniques that many considered obvious was commonplace. That is unless you hold a patent for something like the one-click internet purchase.
