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Sanity From the 1st Post-Bilski Decision from BPAI: In Re Proudler

By Pamela Jones et al.

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:

Laws of nature, abstract ideas, and natural phenomena are excluded from patent protection. Diamond v. Diehr, 450 U.S. at 185. A claim that recites no more than software, logic or a data structure (i.e., an abstraction) does not fall within any statutory category. In re Warmerdam, 33 F.3d 1354, 1361 (Fed. Cir. 1994). Significantly, "Abstract software code is an idea without physical embodiment." Microsoft Corp. v. AT&T Corp., 550 U.S. 437, 449 (2007). The unpatentability of abstract ideas was confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Bilski v. Kappos, No. 08-964, 2010 WL 2555192 (June 28, 2010).

This is not the last word, I'm sure, as HP can certainly try to reword. But don't you find this encouraging? I do. And that's why I wanted it in our permanent record of the Bilski case and its aftermath.

Full post as published by Groklaw on July 13, 2010 (boomark / email).