Software patents are crumbling, thanks to the Supreme Court →
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Patent Office handed out a growing number of what might be called “do it on a computer” patents. These patents take some activity that people have been doing for centuries — say, holding funds in escrow until a transaction is complete — and claim the concept of performing that task with a computer or over the internet. …
But now the courts are sending a pretty clear message: you can’t take a commonplace human activity, do it with a computer, and call that a patentable invention.
We’re making progress on what’s “novel”. Now let’s take a serious look at what’s “non-obvious” to a “person having ordinary skill in the art”.