Patent Attorney and Founder
Hi everyone I’m JD Houvener the host of the bold today’s show we review the inventor business owner entrepreneur get your daily dose of inspiration to make the world a better place and we’re on day three of five part series about software and how software patents have really become quite the news story lately this year opening up quite a few different decisions by the Federal Circuit and we’re open from the Supreme Court to to say that look patent software patents are eligible and I’m going to talk about one of the when the big cases that’s recent about this whole situation so we’ve talked yesterday and the day before opening up okay what is subject matter eligibility all about how software falls into the categories of machines or processes and then we talk about the foundational framework basis of the decisions that have come up in 2012 and 2014 with mayo and alice so with that understanding that those cases have said that looked you know computer implementations of ideas that are abstract or that don’t do anything functional that doesn’t transfer any any type of explainable or transferable media that’s touchable and tangible it’s not eligible now that is actually still the case but some very recent Federal Circuit decisions as we’re going to go over today and tomorrow have changed that landscape so the case I’ll talk about today is about software virus scanning and a case they went before the Federal Circuit is called the finian versus blue coat and so this case was all about how Binion who owns the the patent about computer virus scanning and what they argue successfully to the Federal Circuit is that they don’t just do virus scanning their claims say that they actually scan identify malware or you know code that looks threatening that’s going to do something a harmful to one’s computer and then they categorize it and dispatch it right there a report on bad code in a proactive manner as opposed to traditional virus scanning which simply reads over the code and then identifies pinyons software system there there what they’ve claimed takes that action without seeking that validation from the user right they they sort of imagine a situation where the user isn’t allowed time you know there’s no time for them to give a decision they’ve identified malware or bad code and they move it right off the books and get it off of that system as soon as possible long story short the Federal Circuit bought it and the the key phrase in the decision is that by making an improvement in computer technology it was sufficient to warrant an eligible patent okay that got over the bar and they did quote you know the Alice and the Mayo decisions as being part of that inquiry as to whether it made it proper improvement or was substantially different so there are a lot of now applications pending that have arguably some great room to say that they’ve also got an improvement on computer technology so with this great decision it’s a big buttress to a lot of our current inventors that are in this space SAS systems even financial transactions business methods that are using the computer as long as they can point to the fact that the computer technology is being improved through their technology through their invention they’ve gotten patent eligible and a valid claim in the world so if you’ve learned something today or maybe you’d like to pass this along to someone else feel free please also put a comment below if you have any questions or thoughts about what we talked about today I’d love to hear from you I’m your host JD Houvener the bold today’s show go big go bowl
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