Talk:Software patents under United States patent law

Supreme Court vs CAFC
The excerpt below from an anonymous user is a potentially good addition to the article, but needs a reference. Any help here?--Nowa 12:50, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

The CAFC rulings appear to contradict Supreme Court precedents such as Gottschalk v. Benson and Parker v. Flook, so it is expected that the Supreme Court will have to address the issue eventually.

No software patent granted in the 1970s, ... seems wrong
was granted on March 2, 1971, and appears to essentially constitute a software patent. Cited in Lee A. Hollaar, Software patents in America: Current and future directions, Mitt. Vol. 11/2007--Edcolins (talk) 21:13, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I concur based on claim 2.--Nowa (talk) 21:19, 20 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I concur based on claim 2, as well.71.114.31.98 (talk) 21:29, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry but asserting this as a matter of fact constitutes original research. It may be your professional opinion that this can be characterized as the first software patent but Wikipedia entries are not the appropriate place to do original research or present novel hypothesis. Please see: WP:NOR and WP:NOT — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jaydee000 (talk • contribs) 15:49, 9 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Sorry, but if you read the original comment it's referenced to a published article so it not original research. GDallimore (Talk) 19:31, 9 May 2012 (UTC)
 * And it's not even mentioned in this article so I'm not sure there's any point responding to this 4 year old message anyway. GDallimore (Talk) 19:33, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Inappropriate book in further reading section
The book by Elad Harison is not notable enough (yet) to be in the further reading section of the article. Google scholar (for instance) does not indicate notability of the book. Offering the book as further reading without having independent reviews indicating its reliability is not appropriate. The book is recent and I suspect that the addition in the article was for promotional purpose, as notably evidenced by the series of links added by the same anonymous user, see Special:Contributions/85.250.187.2. Reverted. --Edcolins (talk) 10:14, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Revisions per above
12/23/08 -- I have taken a stab at revising this per the above comments. I hope others will put an oar in as well. It needs more work. PraeceptorIP (talk) 02:16, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

History
The deletion of the image was reverted because the stated reason for its deletion is not supported. The image relates to the first sentence AND the last sentence of the paragraph with which it is associated. In the latter case, the image says almost the same thing as the text, which states: "The reaction of the defeated-feeling PTO was characterized in the cartoon shown at right, which appeared in IEEE Micro at this time." The text statement is 100% factual and not POV. The POV, if any, is that of the cited magazine, about which a neutral statement is made, viz., the magazine said so and so. Further, the image graphically reflects the morale or perh. extreme diffidence in the PTO on the issue, that lasted for about ten years, until the recent past when the PTO reverted to its former position on the issue, because encouraged by recent Sup Ct concurrences or dissents (e.g., Breyer in LabCorp). This culminated in several BPAI decisions, one of which was Bilski, now before the Sup Ct. The image graphically and tellingly depicts the factual background and conveys it to the reader in a readily understood form. PraeceptorIP (talk) 19:29, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Undue length of "History" section
This section is so long that it should be broken up by subheads. Would someone care to do that?

Also, a new section should be added at the end, summarizing the Federal Circuit and district court decisions interpreting and implementing the Alice decision. It seems that few or no software patents have survived the Alice-Mayo legal analysis since June 2014.

PraeceptorIP (talk) 18:09, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

A certain sentence seems to have been damaged ... it may be in need of some repair
These comments are based upon this version of the article Software_patents_under_United_States_patent_law, which says it is "as edited [...] at 12:05, 18 May 2015".

This version of the article contains the sentence:"However, there are restrictions on subject matter eligibility under Section 101 and in general the line between what is deemed patent eligible under Section 101 and what is ineligible changes is, as discussed below, a matter of ongoing judicial activity.[6]"Anyone who thinks that this sentence as quoted here is correct, is welcome to chime in. Actually, anyone who holds any other opinion about that sentence (as quoted here, above) is also welcome to chime in.

Here is some history of that sentence:

History
There are two edits, both from "9 May 2012", that seem to have affected this bit of text. First, in this edit, (also known as "Revision as of 11:21, 9 May 2012"), this bit of text was originally added -- as an add-on to an already long sentence, making it even longer. (You might consider that to be a "run-on" sentence; comments "if any" are welcome).

The "already long sentence" said (leaving out some details):"Section 101 of title 35, United States Code, provides: ((quote from '35 U.S.C. 101'))", where the part shown as ((quote from "35 U.S.C. 101")) included a "". The first change (the one made at 11:21), appended what is now a separate sentence, but originally said THIS:"however, there are restrictions[|numerous] on subject matter eligibility under Section 101 and in general the line between what is deemed patent eligible under Section 101 and what is ineligible changes as a matter of ongoing judicial activity [|]."

Clearly there was some room for improvement, at least in the area of wiki markup for hyperlinks. The expressions in double square brackets seem to be a mixture of (on the one hand), the syntax used for a hyperlink with an article name, in double square brackets followed (optionally) by a "pipe" character ("|"), and a "display text"; and, (on the other hand), the different syntax which is used mainly for external links (or for the URLs of DIFF pages that are not exactly articles), which uses [ single square brackets], and allows some optional "display text" without any "pipe" character ("|").

The next edit, the same day (only about 30 minutes later) was this edit, (also known as "Revision as of 11:51, 9 May 2012"), and it seems to have inserted some improvements to the hyperlinks. However, it also changed the word "as" to "is".

My theory about what went wrong
Perhaps the editor (of that second change, the one also known as "Revision as of 11:51, 9 May 2012"), thought that the word "changes" was part of the phrase right before it, which says "what is ineligible". I am not trying to assign blame here, I am just trying to repair some damage. The only reason to conjecture about what the intent of the editor might have been, here, is [the fact that it might help] as part of an effort to improve this sentence.

In my opinion, the word "changes" in this sentence, is a verb that goes with the subject "the line". (e.g., as in "the line between and ".) Therefore, we do not need another verb, ["is"], and the word "as" should still be there, since it is part of the phrase "as a matter of ongoing judicial activity" which (I presume) was intended to modify the verb "changes".

What I think should be done
IMHO, the improvements to (the wiki markup for) the hyperlinks should (obviously) be kept. On the other hand, IMHO, the word "is" should be changed back to "as", in accordance with [my best "guess" about] the original intent of the person who wrote this sentence.

Also, I think that the parenthetical remark "as discussed below" should either be removed, or else changed to "(see below)", or at least changed to "(discussed below)". IMHO, having both "as a matter of ongoing judicial activity" and another modifier that also starts with "as", could be confusing, and ... it could be unnecessarily confusing.

Any comments?
Sorry this was so long. If no one has any comments, then that is fine. However, if there are any comments, then it might be better to chime in now, instead of waiting until I have already made the edits that are listed above.

This is not intended to mean that if you wait too long it might be "too late". This is just stated to convey openness to the possibility of an "objection", or to the possibility of someone presenting some ideas that might be even better.

Comments are welcome. --Mike Schwartz (talk) 07:00, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Artificial Intelligence
Does anyone want to add a section either about patents on AI or a section on the future prospect of patents on inventions invented by AI, many of which would be software-based?CessnaMan1989 (talk) 19:06, 8 September 2021 (UTC)