Monday, April 30, 2007

Big Day @ SCOTUS

The Supreme Court handed down two major patent-related opinions on Monday -- KSR International v. Teleflex and Microsoft v. AT&T. Technology Daily's PM edition has one story on the rulings and another with reaction from the high-tech sector and attorneys.

But here's what more court watchers had to say…

Solveig Singleton of the Progress & Freedom Foundation said the court, which ruled in favor of KSR, "reached the right result." "The case is on the right track in paving the road for a more stringent standard of non-obviousness," she said.

Congress should exercise caution in the wake of the decision, Singleton said. "Rather than tackling the statutory standard of obviousness directly, address the better-understood institutional and legal process issues," she said. More circuit courts should hear patent appeals to give the U.S. Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit some feedback, she said.

The Computer and Communications Industry Association also hailed the KSR ruling. The "non-obviousness" standard had been eroded by lower courts and, as a result, "junk patents" thrive, the group said. According to CCIA President Ed Black, the ruling reaffirms what his group has long insisted -- that "the patent system’s purpose is to promote innovation, not patents."

The Association for Competitive Technology said the decisions in the two cases "bring some much needed common sense" to patent law. ACT Executive Director Morgan Reed said the KSR ruling in particular will make it much harder "to obtain and enforce the kind of absurd software patents that are threatening the future of the patent system."

"In overturning the Microsoft case, the court realized that "software is different than shrimp deveiners, and needs to be treated as such," Reed said. The original law was intended to prevent Deepsouth Packing from exporting its unassembled shrimp deveiners outside the U.S.

Over at SCOTUSblog, Dennis Crouch (known for his Patently-O blog) says the two decisions came out as expected. He believes both cases make patents less valuable. Because of KSR, patents will be more difficult to enforce and easier to invalidate. The AT&T case cuts in-half the value of many of today's most valuable software patents, he said. Also on SCOTUSblog: Joshua Sarnoff weighs in here and Michael Barclay too.

AT&T, which lost its case, was disappointed. Scott Frank, CEO of AT&T Knowledge Ventures, said "all U.S.-based sources of innovation -- including the software development community -- could benefit from patent laws that enable fair, appropriate protection and valuation of new technologies and inventions domestically and overseas."

"Our intellectual property protection and licensing program continues to focus on maximizing global access to AT&T innovations, while also ensuring that AT&T receives fair and appropriate compensation in return for its investments in research and innovation," Frank said.

The Software and Information Industry Association hailed the decision in the Microsoft case. General Counsel Mark Bohannon said he was “extremely pleased that the Supreme Court reversed the expansive interpretation of the Federal Circuit, which had exposed American software publishers producers to potentially global liability and upset previously settled law that limited the extraterritorial application of U.S. patent law.” SIIA filed briefs on Microsoft's behalf.