Deux nouvelles USA sur le sujet :

  • Microsoft condamné en première instance à payer 1.52 milliards USD a Alcatel-Lucent pour violation de brevet logiciel sur un format audio, lire sur slashdot et sur boursorama qui précise que les brevets portent sur la compression MP3.
  • La cour suprême des USA a clairement évoqué la brevetabilité des logiciels lors d'une audience impliquant Microsoft et AT&T, lire sur slashdot, Groklaw et une liste de liens sur les commentaires juridiques sur SCOTUSblog, extrait de l'audience (PDF) :

[...] DARYL JOSEFFER, ESQ. On behalf of the United States, as amicus curiae [...]

JUSTICE BREYER: I take it that we are operating under the assumption that software is patentable? We have never held that in this Court, have we?

MR. JOSEFFER: No, but as I was saying before --

JUSTICE BREYER: So what should we do here? Should, if we are writing this, since it's never been held that it's patentable in this Court --

MR. JOSEFFER: I think if --

JUSTICE BREYER: If I were writing something, should I say on the assumption that it's patentable? Since the issue isn't raised?

MR. JOSEFFER: No. I think, I think the reason that's not relevant here is that the patented invention in this case is not software. It's computer that has software loaded into it. And the components of a patented invention do not themselves have to be patented. [...]

On rentre dans le coeur du problème.

Bill Gates a maintenant deux raisons de se battre contre les brevets dans le monde du logiciel pour Microsoft et s'il veut sauver des vies dans le monde de la santé.

Ajout 20070223 2137 : voici quelques extraits supplémentaires des discussions :

  • Forbes : Chief Justice John Roberts did not participate in the oral argument. Roberts owns shares of Microsoft, according to the court's financial disclosure forms.
  • Cnet News.com : It's not every day that both the U.S. government and advocates of free and open-source software align themselves in court with Microsoft.
  • Patently-O a des commentateurs pertinents et a choisi de bien meilleurs extraits que les miens, je cite :

Scalia's Jokes:

JUSTICE SCALIA: I hope we can continue calling it the golden disk. It has a certain Scheherazade quality that really adds a lot of interest to this case.

Scared that AT&T will Control our Thoughts:

JUSTICE BREYER: But I then would be quite frightened of deciding for you and discovering that all over the world there are vast numbers of inventions that really can be thought of in the same way that you're thinking of this one, and suddenly all kinds of transmissions of information themselves and alone become components. So I'm asking you, is there any outside the computer field analogous instance where the transmission of information has itself been viewed as the transmission of a component?