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Software Patent News for May 26th

Software Patent News for May 26th:

• Patent Thickets, Bad Patents, and Costly Patent Litigation [The Volokh Conspiracy] -
  . . .we must be especially cautious in assuming that modern problems are necessarily different from those experienced in yesteryear . . . As Professor Khan has shown, the American patent system excelled precisely because it did what none of these other patent systems [England, Germany, and France] would do: It secured inventions as property rights within an institutional framework governed by the rule of law.
• Software rankings: Microsoft in 1st, then IBM and Oracle [CNET News] – -
  The R&D focus at IBM has shifted more toward software and services. More than 70 percent of the U.S. patents IBM received in 2008 (IBM's 16th straight year of patent leadership), were for software and services.
• May 26, 1981: Programmer-Attorney Wins First U.S. Software Patent [Wired.com] - -
  Indian-born Asija had created the program years before, in 1969. He wanted to patent it and visited a few attorneys. But the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled against software patents, and the conventional wisdom was that software would remain not patentable, that it could be protected by copyright. . . . So he personally took on the challenge of getting a patent for his own software, fighting the battle as his own lawyer. He went to law school, learned patent law and passed the bar exam. He filed his application for the Swift-Answer program with the U.S. Patent and Trademarks Office on Dec. 30, 1974.

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