Software and business method patents take a hit

Such may be the case with the famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) State Street decision which legalized software and business method patents a decade ago

Thursday, in a case called in re: Bilski, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit seems to have partly overturned State Street, throwing many of these patents into doubt.

This is the best legal news in a decade for open source. And open source was most definitely involved, evidenced by a Red Hat amicus brief in the case.

Pop some champagne! writes Groklaw. " At issue was whether an abstract idea could be eligible for patent protection. The court says no."

The British term seems appropriate here. I am gobsmacked. If you can't patent how you hedge risks in commodities, you can't very well patent simpler business processes like, say, one-click ordering.

The authors at PatentlyO do not think this eliminates well-written software patents, but many of those who commented on the post had their doubts.

Certainly we are not at the end of this, but for the first time in a long time advocates of software patents have been put on the defensive. This is really big.