Software patent loses in supreme court 9-0

http://lwn.net/Articles/602889/

This is great news. The decision essentially says that you can not take an abstract idea, say it is going to be done on a computer, and patent it. Not all the way there but it is better than the old status quo.

 

Outcome of this case was pretty obvious. No way you can effectively enforce a patent on public code and such.

 

The lower courts were much more divided. I'm really happy the Supreme Court was very clear.

 

I would have thought that any software made comes under something like the GNU licence?

 

Any software that is not licensed specifically basically gives all rights to its developer(s).

 

Wait, can you explain this?

 

Um, no. Companies do not release their software for free. Not sure what gave you that thought.

 

I thought anything that was made my someone was automatically copyrighted or something equivalent?

 

You need to be a copyright on it for it to be copyrighted but this has to do with patents which are very different.