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From the Editors: Let’s hope for a court ruling writ large


By SD Times Editorial Board
November 1, 2009 — 
We want a broad precedent-setting ruling, not a narrow procedural one, in the pending software patent case now at the United States’ highest court.

When the U.S. Supreme Court rules in the now-famous Bilski case, it should take the opportunity to level the playing field for entrepreneurs whose work has been impeded by patent trolls and broad corporate patent portfolios.

The Bilski case involves a patent claim for a business method for hedging risks in commodities trading. A U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that while an invention that has a computer in it that performs computations is patentable, that computation alone is not.

The Supreme Court is reviewing that decision, and its decision could have a dramatic impact on the software industry. That is evidenced by how many organizations have filed amicus briefs with the court.

If the justices rule broadly, some legal experts believe that it could invalidate software patents altogether. While SD Times isn’t necessarily against software patents, we believe that there is too much uncertainty in the current understanding of what is patentable and what is not patentable.

Well-earned patents are an economic driver, but bad patents harm innovation when they are enforced against innovative companies. Unfortunately, it’s not always certain whether a patent is good or bad. That’s what Bilski is all about.

Any court ruling on narrow grounds, and which doesn’t lead to clear precedents about software patents, would continue the uncertainty that plagues software companies and holds back the entire industry.

Patent trolls harm innovation, and large software companies have leveraged questionable patents against competitors. Drawn-out legal battles have become all too common, but the court's Bilski decision, if it clarifies the patent mess one way or another, could abate them.

With so much at stake, it is our hope that the justices make their ruling on substantive grounds—not just procedural grounds. Clarification on the vague patent laws that were passed by the U.S. Congress during the 1970s is long overdue.

We want to believe Oracle
Ever since Oracle reached an agreement to purchase Sun Microsystems, much of the industry—and SD Times—has been concerned about what this purchase would mean for Sun’s highest-profile products.

We have been worried mainly about the future of the Java platform and of the Java Community Process. Java is an important industry specification, and while Sun has not been a perfect steward of the technology, it has done a reasonably good job of keeping a somewhat level playing field.

Of course, one could argue that strategy of fairness was devastating for Sun’s business. Companies like IBM, Oracle and Red Hat/JBoss have profited from selling Java EE servers and services, while Sun’s own offerings languished.

Even so, much of the software industry (outside of the Microsoft hemisphere) relies on the openness of Java EE. Were Oracle to clamp down on Java, and tilt the technology overtly or covertly toward Oracle’s own products, that would be a tragedy for the many businesses that rely upon Java.

We’ve also been worried, but to a much lesser extent, about what happens to other Sun products, such as MySQL, the SPARC processor, Solaris, NetBeans and Open Office. While important and widely used, none of those have the pervasiveness of Java.

If you take Oracle’s Larry Ellison at his word, the software industry has nothing to worry about. At OracleWorld, Ellison and Sun chairman Scott McNealy tried hard to assure customers that Oracle is firmly committed to continuing these products’ trajectory as open platforms. Ellison pledged to make significant R&D investments in many of Sun’s technologies.

We want to believe Ellison, we really do. Let’s hope that he’s as good as his word.


Related Search Term(s): patents, Java, Oracle


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