Late-comers guide: What is Bilski anyway?

Everyone expects the US Supreme Court to publish their decision on the "Bilski" case today (June 28th 2010). The court has to decide on the validity of a patent on a business method, but that’s not the main issue. Everyone expects that patent to be rejected, but the main issue is that to reject a patent the court must give a general test and explain why this patent fails that test. We want to know if they’ll propose a test which will also be failed by some or all software patents.

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New Zealand software patents victory crumbling

NZICT (who’s NZICT?) reports that they convinced the politician in charge of the Patents Bill, Hon Simon Power, to do a u-turn and open the floodgates for software patents. The report was posted on a patent lawyer’s blog, then deleted, but copies have been mirrored:

More details below. People in NZ will have to work on this to prevent a catastrophe.

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Still no Bilski; next dates: 24th, 28th

Once again, after a tense morning, the opinions for the day are all announced and there’s still no Bilski. The remaining opinion dates are Thursday June 24th (announced last Friday) and Monday the 28th. For anyone new to the case, the background is described at en.swpat.org/wiki/Bilski_v._Kappos_(2010,_USA).

Yet again, no Bilski

June 14th‘s opinions have been published, and Bilski’s not there. The SCOTUSblog folk at the court also confirm there’s no Bilski decision. The court has announced that they will additionally publish opinions this Thursday. The possibility of delaying the decision until the next term is very unlikely as Chief Justice Read more…

Again, no Bilski

The Supreme Court handed down a lot of decisions today, but not Bilski. The remaining possible days are all in June: 1st, 7th, 14th, 21st, 28th. The Supreme Court term runs from October to June. Bilski’s hearing was November 9th, which is pretty early, and now the decision is coming Read more…

EU, USA, Japan pushing for patents in ACTA!

The latest leaked ACTA document shows that the EU, USA, and Japan are pushing to extend the this draconian treaty to cover patents! This eye-popping proposal would give patent holders the power to send a cease-and-desist letters to software developers, with threats such as paying the “lost profits” of the patent holder and having the developer’s computer broken and sending the developer the bill for the destruction!

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Bilski: the next steps

There are two phases left. There’s a phase of maybe four or five months until the ruling, and there’s a longer post-ruling phase where we may get legislative proposals or a second Supreme Court case. This is the first time in 28 years where the USA could rid itself of software development’s biggest problem, so let’s look at what we have to do over the coming months.
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