A post on Patently-O links to the briefs in Microsoft v. AT&T.

The post itself discusses the nature of information, and leaves me a bit baffled as to its relevance to the policy issues in the case. But a comment by patent lawyer Tom Kulaga provides a nice sum-up of the case for allowing patents on software:

Many of the software patent applications I draft are also disclosed as being able to be implemented through hardware circuitry although the software version is preferred. No one questions that hardware inventions can be patented. If an inventor can implement an invention either through software or hardware, should he be able to get a patent only for the hardware implementation but not the software implementation?

My point is, it is not software that is protected by patents, but what the software does, its utility. The utility of software is not a matter of expression and has nothing to do with speech as softwarevisualization [a prior commenter] asserts. When I draft a software patent, I claim a program that does a series of steps or functions. This is not really any different than any other claim for a non-software patent I draft. If those steps or functions are new, useful, and non-obvious, why shouldn't a patent issue?

posted by James DeLong @ 12:59 PM | Patents, Software

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