via Groklaw on 10/1/09
I have exciting news for you. Red Hat has just filed its brief [PDF] in Bilski, and it's saying things you certainly have been hoping someone would express to the Supreme Court. For one thing, they explain the tech, how programs are algorithms, and thus they should not be patentable. The brief asks the Supreme Court to adopt the lower court's machine-or-transformation test, but also -- yay! -- to exclude software from patentability!
They also lay out clearly the damage that has been done by broadening patents to include abstract ideas, how risky it has become to even try to write software. Here's the press release, subtitled Files Amicus Brief Giving Open Source Perspective in Bilski Case and Supporting the Exclusion on Patenting Algorithms. Also Red Hat's President and CEO, Jim Whitehurst, has a blog on Bilski.
I love Red Hat. They stand alone alone so far among vendors, willing to stand up and express what the FOSS community would really say if it could speak with one voice to the Supreme Court. This is certainly what *I* would say if I had that chance. And so I am satisfied. I was going down the depressing list of briefs filed for Petitioner on the ABA's list of filed amicus briefs, and it was so frustrating to see no one saying anything like what I believe to be technically true about software patents or addressing the specific needs of Free and Open Source software. At last someone has told them what we wanted to say. I just hope the Supreme Court has some techies in the clerk pool!
