A new ruling on software-patents by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) was sending shockwaves through the internet during the past few days. As Techdirt’s Mike Masnick describes: “court has said that there’s a two-pronged test to determine whether a software of business method process patent is valid: (1) it is tied to a particular machine or apparatus, or (2) it transforms a particular article into a different state or thing. In other words, pure software or business method patents that are neither tied to a specific machine nor change something into a different state are not patentable… Well, it may take some time to digest, but it’s likely this will be appealed to the Supreme Court, so that process may take a while.”
It’s an interesting and lively discussion which left me with the impression that it might be too soon to be too happy about the ruling--after all, the according laws are not changed but interpreted differently. If the ruling will really and finally be reaffirmed by the Supreme Court, the industry of virtual worlds and social networks would also be affected--as Mashable’s Adam Ostrow rightfully points out: “In essence, the ruling means that business ideas in and of themselves aren’t patentable. In addition to Amazon’s “one-click” patent, which is the concept of purchasing something via credit card by just clicking a single website link, Friendster’s patents on social networking also come to mind as being unpatentable based on this judgement.”
The Jaipuria-patent (currently held by LinkedIn, as far as I know) and the Friendster-patent belong to the most powerful patents in terms of social networks. They protect features like automatically setting up somebody you’ve invited as your buddy, or graphically displaying the degree of separation between two members.
In the case of Coobico, we tried to discover and circumvent relevant networking-patents like the Friendster-patent. E.g. our invitation-procedure is currently designed like this: you invite somebody, who subsequently sets up his/her new Coobico-account. Both of you then receive a message asking you to accept each other as buddies. It’s just one example which shows that it’s possible to come up with reasonable (and reasonably different) user interfaces when facing software-patents.
Softwarepatente (noch) nicht Schnee von Gestern
Eine neue Rechtsprechung des Amerikanischen Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) hat in den vergangenen zwei Tagen für einiges Aufsehen gesorgt. Wie Mike Masnick von Techdirt beschreibt: “court has said that there’s a two-pronged test to determine whether a software of business method process patent is valid: (1) it is tied to a particular machine or apparatus, or (2) it transforms a particular article into a different state or thing. In other words, pure software or business method patents that are neither tied to a specific machine nor change something into a different state are not patentable… Well, it may take some time to digest, but it’s likely this will be appealed to the Supreme Court, so that process may take a while.”
Es folgte eine interessante und aufgeregte Debatte, die bei mir den Eindruck hinterließ, daß es noch zu früh wäre, um bereits vom Abgesang der Software-Patente zu sprechen—immerhin ändert sich nicht das Gesetz; es wird eingeschränkt und uminterpretiert. Sollte jedoch das oberste Gericht die Rechtsauffassung unterstützen, wird das auch Auswirkungen auf die Welt der virtuellen Welten und sozialer Netzwerke haben—wie Adam Ostrow bei Mashable ganz richtig anmerkt: “In essence, the ruling means that business ideas in and of themselves aren’t patentable. In addition to Amazon’s “one-click” patent, which is the concept of purchasing something via credit card by just clicking a single website link, Friendster’s patents on social networking also come to mind as being unpatentable based on this judgement.”
Das Jaipuria-Patent (das z.Zt. LinkedIn gehört, soweit ich weiß) und das Friendster-Patent gehören wohl zu den derzeit noch mächtigsten Patenten im Bereich sozialer Netzwerke: sie schützen Features wie z.B. das automatische Verknüpfen eines von mir eingeladenen Nutzers als neuen Freund oder die grafische Darstellung, über welche Bekannte zwei Benutzer in Beziehung miteinander stehen.
Im Falle von Coobico haben wir natürlich versucht, relevante Patente wie das Friendster-Patent zu studieren, um sie erfolgreich zu umgehen. Zum Beispiel sieht unser Einladungs-Mechanismus derzeit wie folgt aus: man lädt einen Freund/eine Freundin ein; dieser/diese legt einen neuen Coobico-Account an; danach erhalten beide eine Meldung, die darauf hinweist, sich gegenseitig als Freund zu akzeptieren. Nur ein Beispiel wie man trotz nerviger Software-Patente dennoch zu vernünftigen Lösungen in der Benutzerführung kommen kann.
:) <- Lutz
