Software Patents Under United States Patent Law
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Software Patents Under United States Patent Law
Neither software nor computer programs are explicitly mentioned in statutory United States patent law. Patent law has changed to address new technologies, and decisions of the United States Supreme Court and United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) beginning in the latter part of the 20th century have sought to clarify the boundary between patent-eligible and patent-ineligible subject matter for a number of new technologies including computers and software. The first computer software case in the Supreme Court was ''Gottschalk v. Benson'' in 1972. Since then, the Supreme Court has decided about a half dozen cases touching on the patent eligibility of software-related inventions. The eligibility of software, as such, for patent protection has been only scantily addressed in the courtsHowever, a recent nonprecedential decision of the Federal Circuit held that software as such is not patent eligible. or in legislation. In fact, in the recent Supreme Court deci ...
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United States Patent Law
Under United States law, a patent is a right granted to the inventor of a (1) process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, (2) that is new, useful, and non-obvious. A patent is the right to exclude others, for a limited time (usually, 20 years) from profiting of a patented technology without the consent of the patent-holder. Specifically, it is the right to exclude others from: making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing, inducing others to infringe, applying for an FDA approval, and/or offering a product specially adapted for practice of the patent. United States patent law is codified in Title 35 of the United States Code, and authorized by the U.S. Constitution, in Article One, section 8, clause 8, which states: Patent law is designed to encourage inventors to disclose their new technology to the world by offering the incentive of a limited-time monopoly on the technology. For U.S. utility patents, this limited-time term of patent i ...
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Patent-eligibility Trilogy
Patentable, statutory or patent-eligible subject matter is subject matter which is susceptible of patent protection. The laws or patent practices of many countries provide that certain subject-matter is excluded from patentability, even if the invention is novel and non-obvious. Together with criteria such as novelty, inventive step or nonobviousness, utility, and industrial applicability, which differ from country to country, the question of whether a particular subject matter is patentable is one of the substantive requirements for patentability. Legislations The subject-matter which is regarded as patentable as a matter of policy, and correspondingly the subject-matter which is excluded from patentability as a matter of policy, depends on the national legislation or international treaty. Canada According to the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) patents may only be granted for physical embodiments of an idea, or a process that results in something that is tan ...
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Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and again from 1983 to 1992, and as attorney general of Arkansas from 1977 to 1979. A member of the Democratic Party, Clinton became known as a New Democrat, as many of his policies reflected a centrist "Third Way" political philosophy. He is the husband of Hillary Clinton, who was a senator from New York from 2001 to 2009, secretary of state from 2009 to 2013 and the Democratic nominee for president in the 2016 presidential election. Clinton was born and raised in Arkansas and attended Georgetown University. He received a Rhodes Scholarship to study at University College, Oxford and later graduated from Yale Law School. He met Hillary Rodham at Yale; they married in 1975. After graduating from law school, Clinton returned to Arkansas ...
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Throw In The Towel
A corner retirement or corner stoppage – abbreviated "RTD (Retired)" by BoxRec – are terms used in boxing to describe a fight that ends when, during any rest period between rounds, a boxer refuses to continue or their corner pulls them out, thereby forcing the referee to call an end to the fight. In contrast, a technical knockout (TKO) may only be declared by the referee or ringside doctor, at any stage of the fight including rest periods. In either case, an RTD still counts as a type of knockout, and is displayed as a stoppage result on a boxer's win/loss record. One of the most notable corner stoppages in boxing occurred during the Muhammad Ali vs. Sonny Liston fight on February 25, 1964, the first of their two fights. After six back-and-forth rounds, Sonny Liston, complaining of a shoulder injury, refused to get up from his stool for the seventh round. As a result, Ali became the world heavyweight champion At boxing's beginning, the heavyweight division had no we ...
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The USPTO Gets Ready To Throw In The Towel (IEEE Micro Cartoon, 1995)
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with pronouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of pronoun ''thee'') when followed by a ...
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AT&T Corp
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile telephone services in the U.S. , AT&T was ranked 13th on the ''Fortune'' 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations, with revenues of $168.8 billion. During most of the 20th century, AT&T had a monopoly on phone service in the United States. The company began its history as the American District Telegraph Company, formed in St. Louis in 1878. After expanding services to Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, through a series of mergers, it became Southwestern Bell Telephone Company in 1920, which was then a subsidiary of American Telephone and Telegraph Company. The latter was a successor of the original Bell Telephone Company founded by Alexander Graham Bell in 1877. The American Bell Telephone Company formed the American Telep ...
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State Street Bank V
State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * '' State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our State'', a monthly magazine published in North Carolina and formerly called ''The State'' * The State (Larry Niven), a fictional future government in three novels by Larry Niven Music Groups and labels * States Records, an American record label * The State (band), Australian band previously known as the Cutters Albums * ''State'' (album), a 2013 album by Todd Rundgren * ''States'' (album), a 2013 album by the Paper Kites * ''States'', a 1991 album by Klinik * ''The State'' (album), a 1999 album by Nickelback Television * ''The State'' (American TV series), 1993 * ''The State'' (British TV series), 2017 Other * The State (comedy troupe), an American comedy troupe Law and politics * State (polity), a centralized political organizati ...
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In Re Lowry
''In re Lowry'', 32 F.3d 1579 (Fed. Cir. 1994) was a 1994 decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on the patent eligibility of data structures. The decision, which reversed a PTO rejection of data structure claims, was followed by a significant change in PTO policy as to granting software related patents, a cessation of PTO appeals to the Supreme Court from reversals of PTO rejections of software patent applications, an increasing lenity at the Federal Circuit toward such patents and patent applications, and a great increase in the number of software patents issued by the PTO. Background Edward S. Lowry filed a computer software patent application in which he described an application program that managed database information by using software data structures that he called "attribute data objects" (ADOs). An ADO is a single primitive data element "compris ngsequences of bits which are stored in the memory as electrical (or magnetic) signals that repre ...
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Piano Roll Blues
The Piano Roll Blues or Old Piano Roll Blues is a figure of speech designating a legal argument (or the response to that argument) made in US patent law relating to computer software. The argument is that a newly programmed general-purpose digital computer is a "new" machine and, accordingly, properly the subject of a US patent. This legal argument was made in ''Gottschalk v. Benson'' in Benson's brief. The government then responded in its brief that this amounted to asserting that inserting a new piano roll into an existing player piano converted the old player piano into a new player piano. After ''Benson'', the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals took the position that the reasoning of ''Benson'' did not apply to "machine" claims, such as a claim to a conventional digital computer programmed to carry out a new algorithm or computer program. In dissenting from that judgment on the grounds that the Supreme Court in ''Benson'' did not limit the principle to method claims, Judge Ri ...
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In Re Alappat
''In re Alappat'', 33 F.3d 1526 (Fed. Cir. 1994), along with ''In re Lowry'' and the ''State Street Bank'' case, form an important mid-to-late-1990s trilogy of Federal Circuit opinions because in these cases, that court changed course by abandoning the ''Freeman-Walter-Abele Test'' that it had previously used to determine patent eligibility of software patents and patent applications. The result was to open a floodgate of software and business-method patent applications, many or most of which later became invalid patents as a result of Supreme Court opinions in the early part of the following century in '' Bilski v. Kappos'' and ''Alice v. CLS Bank''. Background Kuriappan Alappat was an employee of Tektronix, an oscilloscope manufacturer. He and two other employees (Edward Averill and James Larsen, but for convenience the three will be referred to collectively as Alappat) devised a form of "rasterizer," which is a device used in a digital oscilloscope to smooth waveform data be ...
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Algorithm
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing calculations and data processing. More advanced algorithms can perform automated deductions (referred to as automated reasoning) and use mathematical and logical tests to divert the code execution through various routes (referred to as automated decision-making). Using human characteristics as descriptors of machines in metaphorical ways was already practiced by Alan Turing with terms such as "memory", "search" and "stimulus". In contrast, a Heuristic (computer science), heuristic is an approach to problem solving that may not be fully specified or may not guarantee correct or optimal results, especially in problem domains where there is no well-defined correct or optimal result. As an effective method, an algorithm ca ...
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Rubber
Rubber, also called India rubber, latex, Amazonian rubber, ''caucho'', or ''caoutchouc'', as initially produced, consists of polymers of the organic compound isoprene, with minor impurities of other organic compounds. Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia are three of the leading rubber producers. Types of polyisoprene that are used as natural rubbers are classified as elastomers. Currently, rubber is harvested mainly in the form of the latex from the rubber tree (''Hevea brasiliensis'') or others. The latex is a sticky, milky and white colloid drawn off by making incisions in the bark and collecting the fluid in vessels in a process called "tapping". The latex then is refined into the rubber that is ready for commercial processing. In major areas, latex is allowed to coagulate in the collection cup. The coagulated lumps are collected and processed into dry forms for sale. Natural rubber is used extensively in many applications and products, either alone or in combination wit ...
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