The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA), S. 2140, would throw out Supreme Court rules that limit patents on abstract ideas. If PERA passes, it will open the floodgates for far more vague and overbroad software patents. It will even allow for a type of patent on human genes that the Supreme Court rightly disallowed in 2013.
No one should be allowed to take an abstract idea, add generic computer language, and get a patent. And we should never see patents on the genes that naturally occur in human bodies. But if PERA passes, that’s exactly what will happen.
What would you patent?
“A program which handles low level functionality and manages other programs?”
I suppose what I mean is that there is “prior art”. You can’t patent something if it isn’t new and the concept of Linux isn’t. Linux isn’t the first kernel. This law wouldn’t change that.
The first person to create a kernel though, under this law that might perhaps (?) have been patentable. Which would’ve crippled the entire software industry in it’s infancy. Yay patents!
Yes, that’s been true so far. Are you sure it’s true under the newly proposed law?
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What would you patent? “A program which handles low level functionality and manages other programs?” I suppose what I mean is that there is “prior art”. You can’t patent something if it isn’t new and the concept of Linux isn’t. Linux isn’t the first kernel. This law wouldn’t change that. The first person to create a kernel though, under this law that might perhaps (?) have been patentable. Which would’ve crippled the entire software industry in it’s infancy. Yay patents!