Future Of Many Companies Riding On Alice Corp v. CLS Bank

Today the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case whose outcome will shape the future of some of the world’s biggest and richest companies, and many smaller ones as well. The question of the patentability of processes and software and what, if any, difference there is between the two, has become the IP question of our time, and in this article Washington Post writer Timothy B. Lee provides a revealing thumbnail history of how it’s been couched and how it’s been answered by the courts. He recounts some surprising twists and turns, including those of one tech giant that, in the early days of this controversy (that’s about 40 years ago), fought hard for the concept that software should not be patentable, but now holds thousands of software patents and is a leading proponent of the opposite view.