"Unfortunately, there is nothing on the table right now that deals with the more fundamental problem of the huge volume of low-quality software patents."
In Alice v CLS the US Supreme Court decided that Alice's patents were invalid because they were unpatentable abstract ideas. More importantly the Supreme Court ruled that writing an unpatentable abstract idea into software does not make the idea patentable.
The current Supreme Court is reluctant to make a ruling any more generalized than absolutely necessary. Even so we need to take a software patent that is unpatentable for a reason other than being an unpatentable abstract idea and have the Supreme Court declare it invalid and that writing that type of unpatentable idea into software does not make the idea patentable. In the same case we could also advocate that the Supreme Court rule that no unpatentable idea becomes patentable by being written into software rather than the Supreme Court having to make a series of rulings for each class of unpatentable ideas. The net effect of such a generalized ruling would be a defacto abolition of software patents.
"Unfortunately, there is nothing on the table right now that deals with the more fundamental problem of the huge volume of low-quality software patents."
In Alice v CLS the US Supreme Court decided that Alice's patents were invalid because they were unpatentable abstract ideas. More importantly the Supreme Court ruled that writing an unpatentable abstract idea into software does not make the idea patentable.
The current Supreme Court is reluctant to make a ruling any more generalized than absolutely necessary. Even so we need to take a software patent that is unpatentable for a reason other than being an unpatentable abstract idea and have the Supreme Court declare it invalid and that writing that type of unpatentable idea into software does not make the idea patentable. In the same case we could also advocate that the Supreme Court rule that no unpatentable idea becomes patentable by being written into software rather than the Supreme Court having to make a series of rulings for each class of unpatentable ideas. The net effect of such a generalized ruling would be a defacto abolition of software patents.
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Steve Stites