Patent litigation is all over the place these day , and no matter of who ’s in the right hand or wrong in any specific pillowcase , it ’s eating up a whole clustering of resources . That ’s why Facebook , Google , and a turn of other companies have come up together with an amicus briefkindly ask the U.S. State Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to foreswear honor crazy - vague patent .
The brief — which also has signatures from Zynga , Intuit , Dell , Red Hat , Homeaway and Rackspace — offers some unasked advice to the court . The brief specifically relates to a case between CLS Bank and Alice Corp which involves some of say patent of invention , but it also make some sweeping reference to vague patent in general . idiom like “ over the Internet ” or “ on a computer ” , the companies argue , should n’t be enough to turn an otherwise obvious idea into a patenable one .
Here ’s some langauge from the legal brief :
This payoff is critically important in the high - tech context . Many computer - related letters patent claim just describe an nonfigurative approximation at a high level of generalisation and say to do it on a computer or over the Internet . Such barebones claim concede exclusive rights over the abstract theme itself , with no limit on how the melodic theme is implemented . Granting letters patent protection for such claims would mar , not promote , innovation by bestow exclusive right on those who have not meaningfully innovated , and thereby penalizing those that do later innovate by blocking or tax their applications of the abstract idea .
Will this plea have any core ? Who ’s to say , but the more convoluted companies speak out on the topic , the more preposterous it will seem to ignore their opinions , especially in the absence of any big name contend for super vague computing equipment - related letters patent . Still , we ’ll just have to hold off and see if these pleas are listen . You canread the whole brief here , if you ’re into that sort of thing.[AllThingsD ]
figure of speech bySzasz - Fabian Ilka Erika / Shutterstock
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