title: Watershed moment link: https://onemoretech.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/watershed-moment/ author: lembobro description: post_id: 234 created: 2009/10/01 19:42:11 created_gmt: 2009/10/01 19:42:11 comment_status: open post_name: watershed-moment status: publish post_type: post

Watershed moment

Red Hat announced the filing of its amicus brief in Bilski v. Kappos today.

While the court rules of professional responsibility in the several states where I’m still a retired member of the bar in good standing don’t absolutely prohibit me from writing about the case, I’m going to defer to others who know a lot more about intellectual property law than I do. That’s for the best, since for more than a decade I’ve been involved in actually manufacturing intellectual property rather than protecting it.

Apart from reading the actual brief linked to above, go on over to Groklaw for more background and updates. The community of lawyers who have formed around that site always have something interesting and informative to say. ScotusWiki has all the other filings to date on its page for the case. End Software Patents, whose position in the debate should be clear enough, is a resource rich site for anyone interested in learning more.

As Red Hat states in its brief, there has been a growing recognition in many quarters that the proliferation of software patents beginning in the 1990’s “has seriously encumbered innovation in the software industry.” In fact, it may very well be that the refusal of many states in Europe, like France, to enforce software patents may have given them a competitive advantage.

This is a very important case, whose decision will undeniably shape the course of software development for decades to come. It provides an opportunity to reverse the effect of the lower court’s opening of “the floodgates for patents on certain kinds of abstract ideas.”

This case offers an opportunity to restore the historical and well-founded boundries for patentable subject matter that exclude abstract ideas from patent eligibility. It also offers an opportunity to reaffirm the rule, supported both by case law and by sound policy, that computer software is among the types of abstract subject matter that are not patentable…

Bilsky v. Kappos, U.S. (2009), Brief Amicus Curiae of Red Hat, Inc., p. 6.

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