EFS-Web is the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) web-based patent application and document submission system. I have been filing all my documents electronically since the USPTO started beta testing electronic filing (and I am shocked to see that some law firms still do not use electronic filing). All documents filed via EFS-Web must be pdfs with embedded fonts, or image-based pdfs.
May 26, 1981: Programmer-Attorney Wins First U.S. Software Patent
via May 26, 1981: Programmer-Attorney Wins First U.S. Software Patent | This Day In Tech | Wired.com.
Link: U.S. Patent No. 4,270,182.
Method claim 1 does not recite any machine or apparatus or call for transforming an article into a different state or thing. A domain name is simply a series of characters representing the address of a resource, such as a server, on the World Wide Web.
Links: Ex parte Atkin.
The legal point to consider from this case is that the PTO will apply its “broadest reasonable” claim interpretation during its §101 analysis. Here, the BPAI panel found that the broadest reasonable interpretation of IBM’s claim does not necessarily “require computer or machine implementation” and thus that the claim fails the “tied to a particular [...]
PatentlyO:
BPAI: “Programmed Computer Method” Not Patentable Subject Matter
Software Method Claims: Bilski in light of Benson
Post-Bilski BPAI Approves of Beauregard Claims
Applying Bilski to Metabolite’s Diagnosis Claim
Applying Bilski to Biotechnology and the Life Sciences
Bilski: Adding Obvious but Meaningful Limitations
Professor Collins: In re Bilski: Tangibility Gone “Meta”
CLE: How to Draft Software Claims under Bilski
Patenting Tax Strategies Under Bilski
In [...]
Josh Kopelman at First Round Capital has a good post on the value of patents after fighting for 8.5 years to get one of his granted. His Half.com (Ebay.com) patent received six rejections, half of them final, before it was allowed. I explain this to clients, particularly software startups, on a daily basis [...]
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) released version 3 of the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL). GNU GPL is a free software license. According to FSF, almost three quarters of all free software packages are distributed under the GNU GPL license.
Links: The Free Software Foundation, GNU, List of Software Licenses, GNU General Public [...]
You can now search patents with Google. Google Patent Search covers the entire collection of patents made available by the USPTO, from patents issued in the 1790s through those issued in the middle of 2006.
Links: Google Patent Search (via lifehacker)
Some sites to search non-patent prior art:
CiteSeer
IBM Research
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
Scirus
Web 2.0 + Patents = Patents 2.0? The Peer to Patent Project aims to design and pilot an online system for peer review of patents.
U.S. Patent No. 7,011,528 was recently issued to the inventors of the widely used Medical Emergency Response Simulator (MERS) computer program. The patent was written and prosecuted by Elliot Furman.
In a bid to stimulate the market for the Linux operating system, IBM, Novell, Philips, Red Hat, and Sony have joined forces to support the Open Invention Network (OIN). OIN will acquire Linux related patents. The patents will be available on a royalty-free basis to any company, institution, or individual that agrees not [...]
Open Source Development Labs announces patent commons project.
Also: Software Freedom Law Center, Public Patent Foundation, Electronic Frontier Foundation Patent Busting Project, Microsoft on patent reform.
Code Patents is offering an RSS newsfeed of software related patents granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office. The patents are evaluated by a human before being added to the feed so as to eliminate non-software type patents.
Luxembourg has taken the issue of software patents off of the agenda of next week’s meeting of the European Parliament.
Sparks will be flying next week in Brussels as Europe makes a decision on whether to formalize the granting of computer-implemented inventions such as software patents. Software patents are controversial, and opposed by many (1, 2, 3) on the grounds that they stifle innovation and benefit large companies. Nevertheless, it is [...]