Relevant U.S. Supreme Court Ruling
10 July 2007 08:42 Filed in: Legal
Since the hot topic this summer is all about technology patents, not to mention the continuing news items that some company is crushing its competitor using a patent, or a troll attacking real innovators with a questionable patent, I like to pass on some good news that finally there is some hope thanks to a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
Michael Bechauf, SAP’s VP of Industry Standards, may want to take special notice since he believe that the US patent system is well balanced and fair.
This ruling will make it much harder to get questionable patents (such as SAP's patents) and even harder to attack real innovators with such patents. In this case, which had some of largest technology companies in the world arguing on both sides, the Supreme Court has removed a very weak test for whether an invention is obvious, making it much harder to get a patent on an obvious technique, such as one that merely copies current best practices or combines several other inventions in an obvious way.
This is huge news. Many of the worst and most egregious patents out there simply take a known idea, prior art, and add an obvious twist to it. With this new decision, the court has made it much harder to get a patent in this way.
Even better, it looks as if it will be possible to now use this ruling to go after other existing bad patents that were based on obvious ideas. There is no question in my mind that a large number, if not all, of SAP’s patents fall in that category, such as Document conversion process, Translation of information between schemas and Processing business schemas with predefined sequences and predefined documents on personal computer, to only name a few. None of SAP’s patents contain true innovations, not even ordinary ones.
This one court ruling could possibly lead to the removal of many of the worst patents out there today and finally make some real innovation possible. In the case of the SAP patents under discussions none of them would pass the test to qualify as true innovations. The bottom line is that thanks to this ruling SAP would have a hard time to protect its IP by filing for infringement. So, thank you, U.S. Supreme Court. Here's my favorite quote from the decision that says it all:
Michael Bechauf, SAP’s VP of Industry Standards, may want to take special notice since he believe that the US patent system is well balanced and fair.
This ruling will make it much harder to get questionable patents (such as SAP's patents) and even harder to attack real innovators with such patents. In this case, which had some of largest technology companies in the world arguing on both sides, the Supreme Court has removed a very weak test for whether an invention is obvious, making it much harder to get a patent on an obvious technique, such as one that merely copies current best practices or combines several other inventions in an obvious way.
This is huge news. Many of the worst and most egregious patents out there simply take a known idea, prior art, and add an obvious twist to it. With this new decision, the court has made it much harder to get a patent in this way.
Even better, it looks as if it will be possible to now use this ruling to go after other existing bad patents that were based on obvious ideas. There is no question in my mind that a large number, if not all, of SAP’s patents fall in that category, such as Document conversion process, Translation of information between schemas and Processing business schemas with predefined sequences and predefined documents on personal computer, to only name a few. None of SAP’s patents contain true innovations, not even ordinary ones.
This one court ruling could possibly lead to the removal of many of the worst patents out there today and finally make some real innovation possible. In the case of the SAP patents under discussions none of them would pass the test to qualify as true innovations. The bottom line is that thanks to this ruling SAP would have a hard time to protect its IP by filing for infringement. So, thank you, U.S. Supreme Court. Here's my favorite quote from the decision that says it all:
We build and create by bringing to the tangible and palpable reality around us new works based on instinct, simple logic, ordinary inferences, extraordinary ideas, and sometimes even genius. These advances, once part of our shared knowledge, define a new threshold from which innovation starts once more. And as progress beginning from higher levels of achievement is expected in the normal course, the results of ordinary innovation are not the subject of exclusive rights under the patent laws. Were it otherwise patents might stifle, rather than promote, the progress of useful arts.
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