In a major and welcome move, the Supreme Court of US has disallowed “Business Method Patents”.
The decision which holds the subject patent “a method for reducing the risk that the parties to a transaction will not pay what they owe” invalid for patent, opens up a debate on several other vague patents which have been granted in the past.
Though the decision states that it should not affect software patents, many software patents may also get challenged in the process.
The development is interesting and could be beneficial to the community in the long run.
Naavi.org has in the past discussed how IPR is often misused both under Copyright and Patent laws and argued for a more saner implementation. Perhaps the subject decision will help in rationalizing the IPR concept in the coming days.
Naavi
