As an update to my previous posts from 2017, 2019, 2020, March 2021, August 2021, and 2022, it has now been almost nine years since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014 Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank decision. Yet the debate still rages over when a software (or computer-implemented) claim is patentable versus being simply an abstract idea “free to all men and reserved exclusively to none” (as eloquently phrased over 74 years ago by then-Supreme Court Justice Douglas in Funk Bros. Seed Co. v. Kalo Inoculant Co.). Further, it has been 12 years since famed venture capitalist Marc Andreessen wrote the influential and often-quoted op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal titled “Why Software Is Eating the World.” Today, the digital transformation where software is “eating the world” is undeniable. Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Metaverse, Web3, cloud, gene editing, autonomous driving, quantum computing, and “green tech” dominate the technology news headlines and technology trend forecasts – all heavily reliant on software-related innovation – [Forbes] [Gartner] [World Economic Forum], but we are still without concrete guidelines for software-related patenting.
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