A rare en banc hearing of the US federal circuit court today will re-hear the arguments over a fiercely-fought software patent case, CLS Bank vs Alice Corp (the aggressor here is actually Alice; CLS is named first as they sued pre-emptively). Among the amici briefs is one from the EFF proposing Mark Lemley‘s elegant re-examination of the patent statute as a solution. This involves treating “a computer which…”, the weasley phrase added in front of abstract patent claims to make them patentable, as unacceptable unless it refers to a specific implementation of a computer. In this case, the statute’s rules on functional claiming would then apply, severely restricting the scope of the patent. I explain in more detail in InfoWorld today.
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