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| English: Portrait of Judge Elbert Tuttle, taken by United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, from here. It is a work of the federal judiciary, so it is in the public domain. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Top patent court struggles to decide when software is patentable
the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that upheld a patent on the idea of using a computer to perform a particular kind of financial transaction. Now, just a couple of weeks later, the same court has reached the opposite conclusion about a patent on using a computer to manage a particular type of life insurance policy. ..... The courts have long ruled that "abstract ideas" and "mental processes" are not eligible for patent protection. And that has implications for the patentability of software. .... Every computer application, no matter how sophisticated, consists of nothing more than "the performance of repetitive calculations." .... At root, the judges of the Federal Circuit appear confused about how computers work
