Software is once again unpatentable in the United States

[Matthew Woehlke]

Jon Ciesla wrote:
> Matthew Woehlke wrote:
>> Also from http://ben.klemens.org/blog/arch/00000009.htm:
>>> Despite claiming that all that matters is the
>>> machine-or-transformation test, the ruling also bears in mind many
>>> other necessary conditions for patentability, such as the rule that a
>>> patent may not �wholly pre-empt� a law of nature or principle or
>>> mathematical formula. Also, if you wholly pre-empt a mathematical
>>> algorithm within some narrow field of endeavor, the court rules that
>>> this is still a pre-emption. I'll have a little more on this below.
>> Note "a patent may not 'wholly pre-empt' ... a mathematical formula".
>>
>> ...which means all those codecs from livna/rpmfusion just became 100%
>> legal, no royalty required*.
>>
>> (* assuming the copyright license is not an issue, of course)
> 
> I assume an "official" statement on this from Fedora/RedHat legal folk
> will be forthcoming.
> 
> Unless it already has, and I missed it, which is entirely possible.

Jeff already pointed out RH's press release. As has been stated, the 
Bilski decision does not paint the issue in black and white, and as 
such, I don't expect *Red Hat* to decide that including e.g. lame in 
Fedora is now okay.

Nevertheless, if the rule that math cannot be patented is upheld, I 
think victory, at least for some areas that have historically caused 
much friction (i.e. multimedia codecs) is inevitable. (And since other 
areas fall more closely into "business methods", well... those patents 
are in for rough times as well.)

And it's ammunition for non-paid "patented" codec users to say 
(rightfully) that the patents they are allegedly violating are, in fact, 
illegal.

-- 
Matthew
Please do not quote my e-mail address unobfuscated in message bodies.
-- 
Igor Peshansky: Don't hippos love water even more than dogs?
Dave Korn: Don't ask me. I didn't even know that hippos loved dogs.