The U.S. Supreme Court delivered its much-anticipated decision in the case of Alice v. CLS today. The case involved an Australian company attempting to enforce patents on software managing risk mitigation in financial transactions; CLS Bank sought a court ruling that the patents were not enforceable. The first court ruled Alice's patents invalid; the Federal Circuit Appeals court reversed that decision; and then the same court, in an en banc hearing, re-ruled that the patents were invalid. The Supreme Court today upheld that ruling.
This is great news for America's software industry: It just became much harder to prove a software patent is valid. In affirming the lower court's en banc decision, the Supreme Court confirmed its previously-devised approach to such matters. It divided the problem into two parts:
InfoWorld/ full read here/ http://www.infoworld.com/t/technology-business/supreme-court-strikes-serious-blow-against-software-patents-244678
