In June, the Supreme Court produced a ruling on Alice v. CLS Bank which stated that abstract ideas being performed on a computer can’t be patented. In other words, taking a practice that is done without computers and doing it with a computer is not enough to warrant a patent. Since then, a number of “do it on a computer” patents have been invalidated, and this growing trend away from the liberal use of patents in the software world will likely force our society to rethink the use of patents, especially in software.
