Google Page Rank Patent Invalidated?

Recent findings by the US Patent and Trademark Office may invalidate many existing software patents, including Google’s Page Rank:

[from The Death of Google’s Patents by John F Duffy]

The Patent and Trademark Office has now made clear that its newly developed position on patentable subject matter will invalidate many and perhaps most software patents, including pioneering patent claims to such innovators as Google, Inc.

In a series of cases including In re Nuijten, In re Comiskey and In re Bilski, the Patent and Trademark Office has argued in favor of imposing new restrictions on the scope of patentable subject matter set forth by Congress in section 101 of the Patent Act. In the most recent of these three—the currently pending en banc Bilski appeal—the Office takes the position that process inventions generally are unpatentable unless they “result in a physical transformation of an article” or are “tied to a particular machine.” Perhaps, the agency has conceded, some “new, unforeseen technology” might warrant an “exception” to this formalistic test, but in the agency’s view, no such technology has yet emerged so there is no reason currently to use a more inclusive standard.

I will spare you the legaleses, but it looks like the PTO might move forward with new interpretations of patent law that would hit Google and thousands of other software companies.

[pointer @nitin]