Software Scan

The President's Column

I'm twittering! Or tweeting? Or whatever it's called when you post little tidbits on twitter.com. You can now follow my amazing 140 characters of insight about intellectual property at twitter.com/bob_zeidman.

In this month's Scanning IP section I discuss the Supreme Court's decision (or lack thereof) on Bilski. In this month's Scanning Tools section I discuss a new tool from SAFE Corporation called the Report Generator or RPG that allows you to generate reports for litigation at the push of a button.

Send me your comments and critiques. I'm always interested in hearing from you.

Bob Zeidman
President, SAFE Corporation

Scanning IP

The Supreme Court Rules About Software Patents and Business Method Patents (Kind Of)

Many in the intellectual property business have been holding their breath waiting for this case to be decided. Many countries don't allow software patents at all and most countries don't allow business method patents. The United States allows both, but the lines, limits, and legality have been changing over the past years. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) decided that Bilski's patent on a method for handling energy hedge funds was not patentable because patents must be tied to a particular machine or transform an article from one thing or state to another. This "machine-or-transformation test" is probably as confusing to you as it is to the thousand of inventors and attorneys who had to understand it. Bilski appealed to the Supreme Court and on Monday the Supreme Court decided. Bilski loses his patent, but not because of the machine-or-transformation test. Abstract ideas have never been patentable and that's what Bilski's patent is, according to the Supreme Court. They also ruled that the machine-or-transformation test is only one test for patentability, not the only test as the CAFC had stated. They also ruled that business methods are patentable, as long as they are not abstract ideas.

Still confused? So are many others. Except for Bilski who now knows for sure that he doesn't have a patent. Looking at it as an inventor, I see that the court has broadened the scope of patentable materials, which is good, but has made the test for patentability muddier which means I will spend even more time and more money arguing with patent examiners. Looking at it as an expert witness for patent litigation, this ruling is sure to cause a lot more disagreements, which means a lot more litigation, which means a lot more business for me.

An excellent discussion of the Bilski ruling can be found at Patently-O, written by Dennis Crouch,
Associate Professor at the University of Missouri School of Law. His regular columns on patents are the best ones available anywhere.

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Get Smart

SAFE offers training at our facility or yours or on the Web. Contact us to make arrangements:

MCLE credit in software IP

CodeSuite certification

Your New Office

Remember that you can now have your own secure office at the SAFE facility for storing proprietary software, running CodeSuite, analyzing the results, and getting onsite support. We're located at

20863 Stevens Creek Blvd.
Suite 456
Cupertino, CA 95014
(408) 517-1167

Scanning Tools

The Report Generator (RPG)

The Report Generator ("RPG") is a new program from SAFE that automatically generates draft expert reports and declarations for litigation. Reports have several generic sections such as an expert's experience and descriptions of the technologies involved in the examination, which can be shared amongst reports. By automating the compilation of the generic information into a formatted and structured draft report, the expert can focus on performing the analysis and writing the case-specific arguments.

When using the RPG, an expert selects the type of case, type of report, types of technologies involved, types of tools used, and expert background profiles from a GUI. Then a Microsoft Word draft report is generated that includes all of the selected generic information intermixed with blank sections where case-specific information should be filled in manually.

Currently, many experts either dig through their prior works to find specific descriptions or write them from scratch each time. Maintaining a library of generic report elements is a challenge, especially when multiple experts are involved. RPG acts as a version control system between multiple experts who can upload and download detailed descriptions of experts, technologies, and tools from a central server. The reports are generated according to specific formats, so an entire team of experts can easily produce reports that are consistently formatted with the most up-to-date descriptions.

RPG also keeps synced descriptions of CodeSuite, so it can include the most up-to-date descriptions and pricing of the tools without having to search the S.A.F.E. website or CodeSuite help files.

If you're interested in trying out RPG, contact our Sales Department.