“US Software Patents Hit Record High”
US Patent and Trademark Office made a new record for the number of software patents awarded in a single year. The agency has issued 893 new patents yesterday, pushing the total to 30,232 in this year.
if this is the trend for registration, more than 40,000 software patents will be issued more in this year, according to the Public Patent Foundation. The previous record was set in 2004.
The post brings up the NTP v. RIM case, where NTP, a patent-farm, sued the maker of the Blackberry for patent infringement. Even though RIM had the patents rejected upon reexamination, RIM eventually settled with NTP for $612.5 M. (NTP has not yet exhausted the appeals process on the USPTO patent reexamination decisions.)
Some followers saw this as a cry for the reexamination of the patent system as a whole, and the rejection of the NTP patents as a firming of the patent-gifting process. But maybe this recent news merely highlights the traditional pace of change in governmental bureaucracies: slow to none.
Hoo-ray.