The US Supreme Court has ruled in Bilski v. Kappos. Groklaw: "The lower court's decision is affirmed, and so no patent for Bilski.
Red Hat has submitted comments to the U.S Patent and Trademark Office regarding interpretation of the Supreme Court's Bilski decision: "The submission was made in response to the PTO’s request for public comments to assist it in determining how to apply the Supreme Court’s decision in that case.
Groklaw: "Every day I check to see if there is any news about a decision by the US Supreme Court on In Re Bilski. I'm sure a lot of you do too, so while we wait, here's a 30-minute movie by independent filmmaker Luca Lucarini, Patent Absurdity: how software patents broke the system, made possible by a grant from the Free Software Foundation, on how we got into patent quicksand in the US:"
Groklaw: "Look at this, will you? The first decision from the Board of Patents Appeals and Interferences post-Bilski to reference that US Supreme Court decision, in In Re Proudler [PDF], a ruling rejecting HP's application for a software patent, setting forth a rule stating, as I read it, as saying software is not patentable because it's an abstraction:"
LWN.net: "As the last possible date for a ruling approached, the Free Software Foundation observed: "For Supreme Court watchers, following Bilski has been like following the World Cup. Productivity has fallen and ulcers have grown." Alas, it seems that the World Cup analogy extends to bad calls as well."
Bradley Kuhn gives some next steps for anti-software-patent advocates: "Since Bilski has given us no new tools for abolishing software patents, we must redouble efforts with tools we already have to mitigate the threat patents pose to software freedom.
First title page of the scientific journal Nature, November 4th, 1869.
Summary: News about patents, ranging from action against software patents in the United States to patent trolls and their use of software patents to terrify US-based businesses
Brett Smith from the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has just issued a call for mail to be sent to the USPTO, urging it “to stop issuing softwar
Luis Villa has posted some more thoughts on Bilksi: "In other words, the PTO has reverted to the pre-business-methods ‘machine-or-transformation’ test as a default, with the burden of proof shifted to the patent filer to show a ‘clear indication’ that their non-machine/non-transformation is not an ‘abstract idea.’
Software patents are a frequently debated topic here in the Linux blogosphere, but nary a conversation has taken place about them in recent years without at least some hopeful mention of Bilski. Many, in fact, have looked to the longstanding case to finally put to rest the legal threats and patent quibbling that has beset the field.
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