Martin Goetz

This article reviews the 50 years of controversy on software patents. Because there continues to be a cloud over computer-implemented inventions, the article makes the argument, through indisputable facts, that computer-implemented inventions are no different from inventions that have been patented since the beginning of the Patent System in 1790. Finally, the article reviews three innovative patented computer-implemented inventions and explains why the phrase “software patent” is meaningless.

the Courts have found it difficult to use the Mayo two-part test in the examination of a patent’s validity thus creating great uncertainty… One should not confuse the uncertainty of the complex U.S. patent system with the clarity of the Alice decision. There is no reason to believe any new legislation will provide any improvement in deciding what should, and what should not, be patentable.

Clearly, one does not get a patent on software or a computer program. Software, just like electronic circuits, or steam, or solar energy, or gears, or rubber bands — to name a few — is only a means to an end. Under the USPTO long time guidelines one receives a patent only if a) there is an invention b) if there is a proper Specification (an adequate disclosure to one skilled-in-the-art) and c) the so-called invention in the patent application is not abstract and not obvious.

Based on the Supreme Court decision and the Patent Office guidelines it is clear to me that the Alice Supreme Court decision is a major victory for patenting computer-implemented (software) inventions. When the Supreme Court unanimously agreed that the critical issue is whether there is an inventive concept (and not on how an invention is implemented) the Supreme Court finally ended the debate on whether computer-implemented inventions are patentable.

Certain things are obvious. It was obvious in the oral arguments that it was a challenge for both the Supreme Court judges and the lawyers to distinguish between abstract ideas, ideas, computer programs, technological innovations, patentable subject matter, and inventions. This confusion also showed up in the seven different written opinions of the judges in the Appeals Court review of this same case… Mr. Perry was wrong about word processing and e-mail. Providing a “technical solution to a then unmet problem” and providing a “technological advance” often does not constitute making an invention. That’s because with computers you can often make a technical advance that is obvious.