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List of software patents 

This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy certain standards for completeness.
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This is a categorized list of notable patents and patent applications involving computer programs, often labelled software patents. The patents are listed according to their effective filing date (i.e. priority date if a priority is claimed or filing date otherwise).

Software patents cover a wide range of topics and there is therefore important debate about whether such subject-matter should be excluded from patent protection.[1] However, there is no official way of identifying software patents and different researchers have devised their own ways of doing so.[2]

One particular way of defining and identifying software patents was proposed by Bessen and Hunt in a 2004 working paper.[3] The Bessen/Hunt technique identifies software patents according to the presence or absence of particular words in the title and specification of the patent, as follows:

(("software" in specification) OR ("computer" AND "program" in specification))
ANDNOT ("chip" OR "semiconductor" OR "bus" OR "circuit" OR "circuitry" in title)
ANDNOT ("antigen" OR "antigenic" OR "chromatography" in specification)

This article lists patents that meet this particular definition and which are also notable as a consequence of, for example, high-profile litigation or notoriety within the open source community. Notable patent applications are also listed and where corresponding patents and patent applications in different countries have received different treatment due to different examination practices, this is highlighted in the comments.

The patents and patent applications are categorised according to the subject matter of the patent or the particular field in which the patent had an effect that brought it into the public view. The wide range of these categeories illustrates the diverse nature of patents that fall under the Bessen/Hunt definition of a software patent.

Graph of the number of software patents per the Bessen/Hunt technique relative to the total number of patents granted by the USPTO since 1971
Graph of the number of software patents per the Bessen/Hunt technique relative to the total number of patents granted by the USPTO since 1971

Contents

Business methods


Number Comments Other family members Earliest filing date
US patent 5193056 (Main article: State Street Bank & Trust Company v. Signature Financial Group, Inc.) This patent was at the centre of a US Federal Circuit judgment in 1998 which confirmed that business methods implemented on a computer are patentable in the US since they produced a "useful, concrete and tangible result".[4] The claims of the corresponding European patent application were rejected by the European Patent Office (EPO) as relating to unpatentable subject matter.[5] EP patent application 0575519 1991-03-11
US patent 5960411 (Main article: 1-Click) Amazon.com sued Barnes & Noble for violating its "One click buy" but the case was ultimately settled.[6] Amazon have so far failed to obtain a similar patent in Europe.[7] EP patent application 1134680 1997-09-12
GB patent application 2388937 (Main article: Aerotel v Telco and Macrossan's Application) Although granted in several non-European countries, the patent application was refused as relating to excluded subject matter under UK law as being a method of doing business and a program for a computer as such.[8] The case law developed in refusing this patent application forms the basis for the current practice of the UK Intellectual Property Office (UK-IPO) when deciding whether to grant patent applications involving excluded subject matter such as computer programs.[9] The EPO have refused to search for prior art that might be relevant to the corresponding European patent application, stating that such a search would serve no useful purpose since the application solves no technical problem.[10] EP patent application 1346304
AU patent 759130B
NZ patent 526345
SA patent 20034644
Sing patent 96922		 2000-11-23
US patent 7013284 Accenture sued Guidewire Software in December 2007, alleging their infringement of this insurance technology patent. Accenture alleged that Guidewire infringed the US patent protecting an insurance claims management technology that Accenture developed and licenses to the insurance industry. Intellectual property suits are not common in the insurance software market and this suit may represent a new front in the intellectual property wars according to one analyst.[11][12] 1999-05-04

Data compression

Data compression in general

Stac Electronics sued Microsoft for patent infringement when Microsoft introduced the DoubleSpace data compression scheme into MS-DOS.[14] Stac was awarded $120 million by a jury in 1994 and Microsoft was ordered to recall versions of MS-DOS with the infringing technology.[15]

Audio compression

One of several[16] patents covering the MP3 format owned by the Fraunhofer Society which led to the development of the Ogg Vorbis format as an alternative to MP3.[17]
Two patents owned by Alcatel-Lucent relating to MP3 technology under which they sued Microsoft for $1.5 billion.[18] Microsoft thought they had already licensed the technology from Fraunhofer, and this case illustrates one of the basic principles of patents that a license does not necessarily permit the licensee to work the technology, but merely prevents the licensee from being sued by the licensor.[19]

Image compression

Unisys's patent on LZW compression, a fundamental part of the widely used GIF graphics format.
Forgent Networks claimed this patent, granted in 1987, covered the JPEG image compression format. The broadest claims were found to be invalid in 2005 following re-examination by the US Patent and Trademark Office.[20]
This patent, owned by Lizardtech, Inc., was the subject of infringement proceedings against companies including Earth Resource Mapping, Inc. However, Lizardtech lost the trial on the grounds that an important part of their invention was the step of "maintaining updated sums of discrete wavelet transform coefficients from the discrete tile image to form a seamless discrete wavelet transform of the image". Claim 21 of the patent lacked this feature and was therefore obvious. The remaining claims contained this feature, but were not infringed by ERM.[21] Internet buzz suggested the patent covered the JPEG 2000 image compression format but the additional feature of the valid claims appears not to be a JPEG 2000 requirement.[22]

Video compression

Number Comments Other family members Earliest filing
- Grant dates
US patent 6041345 (Main article: - ) A Microsoft patent covering a method of encapsulating multiple streams of data into a data stream that is implemented in the Advanced Systems Format. The author of the open source video capture tool, VirtualDub, which is licensed under GPL alleged that an employee of Microsoft requested that he remove support for ASF from his program. The author has said that he does not have the money to pay for a license under the patent and that he would not take a free license that placed restrictions on future uses of his code in violation of GPL.[23] - 1996-03-08
- 2000-03-21

Data encryption

Number Comments Other family members Earliest filing
- Grant dates
US patent 4405829 (Main article: RSA ) A software patent describing the ground-breaking RSA algorithm for public-key cryptography, still used for secure communications today.[24] - 1977-12-14
- 1983-09-20

Gaming systems

A patent for a gaming system that has particular importance regarding Internet usage. A server running the game was located outside the UK but could be used within the UK. The Court of Appeal of England and Wales judged that the patent was being infringed by virtue of the sale of CDs in the UK containing software intended to put the invention into effect in the UK.

Image processing

Robert Silver's patent on his photographic mosaicing technique. The UK part of the European patent is currently undergoing revocation proceedings, the results of which may be important in comparing the practice of the UK Patent Office with that of the European Patent Office.[25]
A patent covering the technique commonly known as Carmack's Reverse

Internet tools

Number Comments Other family members Earliest filing
- Grant dates
US patent 5838906 (Main article: - ) Eolas successfully sued Microsoft for $521 million for the "browser plugin patent". [26] - 1994-10-17
- 1998-11-17
US patent 4873662 (Main article: - ) British Telecom believed that this patent might cover web hyperlinks and tried enforcing it against Prodigy as a test case. After costly litigation, a court found for Prodigy, ruling that British Telecom's patent did not actually cover web hyperlinks.[27] - 1976-07-20
- 1989-10-10
US patent 6192407 (Main article: - ) This patent is one of several owned Tumbleweed Communications and relates to a document delivery system that generates a unique URL for intended recipients of a document in order to deliver that document. Tumbleweed has licensed this and related patents in their patent portfolio to 29 companies.[28] They have also filed several patent infringement lawsuits. [29] All of the suits have been settled but full details of the settlements, including, in some cases, whether or not any license fees have been paid, have not been made available. Overall, however, Tumbleweed earns about 10% of its revenue from patent licensing and 90% of its revenue from selling products and services. - 1996-10-24
- 2001-02-20

Search engines

A patent relating to pay-per-click Internet search engine advertising. Originally filed by Goto.com, Inc. (renamed Overture Services, Inc.), Google and FindWhat were both sued for infringement prior to Overture's acquisition by Yahoo!

Telecommunications

Washington Research Foundation asserted this patent in December 2006 against Matsushita (owners of the Panasonic brand), Nokia and Samsung. Granted in October 2006 (originating from a 1996 filing) it relates to dynamically varying the passband bandwidth of a tuner. If the claims had been upheld, CSR plc (previously known as Cambridge Silicon Radio), who supply the defendants with Bluetooth chips, could have lost market share to Broadcom who already had a license under the patent.[30] Despite believing that the infringement suit was without merit, CSR agreed to pay WRF $15m in return for an undertaking that WRF would not sue CSR, its suppliers, customers, or end users.[31]
One of three patents granted in respect of Karmarkar's algorithm, which relates to linear programming problems.[32] Claim 1 of this patent suggests the algorithm should be applied to the allocation of telecommunication transmission facilities among subscribers.

User interfaces

Immersion Corporation sued Sony under these US patents in 2002. They relate to force-feedback technology such as that used in Playstation 2 controllers. Sony lost the case and Immersion were awarded $90.7 million, an injunction (stayed pending appeal), and a compulsory license.[33] The claims of the related European patent application require the device to be attached to a body part and were, in any event, refused by the examining division of the European Patent Office for lacking an inventive step.[34]
The patent relates to a progress bar. Filed in 1989, it was highlighted in 2005 by Richard Stallman in New Scientist[35] and The Guardian[36] as an example of a software patent granted by the European Patent Office, that would impede software development[35] and would be dangerous.[36] The claims as granted describe a process of breaking down a task to be performed by a computer into a number of equal task units and updating a display each time a unit is completed and therefore does not cover progress bars which operate in different ways.

Miscellaneous

Notable due to proprietor hyperbole

Owned at various times by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. and Compton's NewMedia, Inc. this patent was granted in August 1993. Just a few months later, in November 1993, Compton's announced that "Everything that is now multimedia and computer-based utilizes this invention" and tried to use the patent to ensure that everyone licensed their software.[37] Although a cursory review of the granted claims showed this statement to be mere hyperbole, there was nonetheless an outcry from the industry and the patent was revoked following re-examination.[38]
Patents owned by Scientigo and claimed by them to cover the markup language XML, a notion rejected by patent attorneys and other commentators including Microsoft.[39]

Notable due to public misconception

Early in 2006, rumours circulated on the Internet that Cingular Wireless had patented the emoticon and, in particular, had patented the concept of using emoticons on mobile phones.[40] This resulted in a great deal of anger directed at the US Patent Office that such patents should never have been granted.[41] Ultimately, it was pointed out that it was only a published patent application, not a granted patent, and that the claims of the patent application actually related to a mobile phone with a dedicated button for inserting emoticons.[42]
This patent application is currently being examined by the US patent office. All of the originally filed claims were rejected on 2007-02-22 as being known or obvious, although the rejection was not final.[43] The corresponding European patent application has yet to be examined.[44]

References

  1. ^ RIM v Inpro [2006] EWHC 70 (Patents), paragraph 185 (2006-02-02)
  2. ^ "The Software Patent Experiment (March 16, 2004), pages 4-5". James Bessen and Robert M. Hunt. Retrieved on 2007-04-12.
  3. ^ "An Empirical Look at Software Patents (Working Paper No. 03-17/R)". James Bessen and Robert M. Hunt. Retrieved on 2007-04-12.
  4. ^ "Financial services software containing algorithm is patentable". Cornell University. Retrieved on 2007-04-12.
  5. ^ The European Patent Register for EP patent application 0575519 includes a full copy of the file history.
  6. ^ "Amazon, Barnes & Noble settle patent suit". CNET. Retrieved on 2007-04-12.
  7. ^ "Another setback for Amazon 1-click". IPKat. Retrieved on 2007-04-12.
  8. ^ Aerotel Ltd v Telco Holding Ltd and others, and Neal William Macrossan's application [2006] EWCA 1371 (Civ) (2006-10-27)
  9. ^ "Patents Act 1977: Patentable subject matter". UK Intellectual Property Office. Retrieved on 2007-03-12.
  10. ^ The European Patent Register for EP patent application 1346304 includes the file history.
  11. ^ "Accenture Files Patent Infringement Lawsuit Against Guidewire". Accenture. Retrieved on 2007-12-31.
  12. ^ "Accenture Sues Guidewire for Alleged Patent Infringement". FinanceTech (Information Week InformationWeek). Retrieved on 2007-12-31.
  13. ^ This link goes to the patent application. Electronic copies of granted GB patents are not freely available
  14. ^ "Complaint for patent infringement and Demand for jury trial by Stac Electronics v Microsoft Corporation". Retrieved on 2007-04-21.
  15. ^ "Microsoft Loses Patent Suit". Associated Press (February 23, 1994). Retrieved on 2007-04-21.
  16. ^ "MP3 Patent Portfolio". Thomson. Retrieved on 2007-04-21.
  17. ^ "FLAC Joins Xiph.Org". Xiph.org (January 29, 2003). Retrieved on 2007-04-21.
  18. ^ "Patent Monkey: Details on Alcatel’s $1.5 B Win Against Microsoft". CrunchGear. Retrieved on 2007-04-21.
  19. ^ "My, that's a lot of money". IPKat. Retrieved on 2007-04-21.
  20. ^ Review of the Forgent JPEG case by the Public Patent Foundation
  21. ^ Summary Judgment in LizardTech v Earth Resource Mapping
  22. ^ LizardTech press release, 1 November 2004 and ERM press release, 2 November 2004
  23. ^ Advogato: Microsoft patents ASF media file format, stops reverse engineering
  24. ^ SIAM News, Volume 36, Number 5, June 2003, "Still Guarding Secrets after Years of Attacks, RSA Earns Accolades for its Founders", by Sara Robinson
  25. ^ The UK Patents Status Enquiry for EP0852363 provides current status information on the patent.
  26. ^ Press release from Eolas
  27. ^ Summary Judgement ruling that no jury could find that Prodigy infringes the Sargent patent, whether directly or contributorily, either as part of the Internet or on its Web server viewed separate and apart from the Internet.
  28. ^ Tumbleweed patent licensees
  29. ^ "Tumbleweed brings patent infringement case against Yahoo!" Internet Business News, Sept 13 2002
  30. ^ "Bluetooth battle looms". IPKat (2007-01-04). Retrieved on 2007-01-04.
  31. ^ "CSR settles Bluetooth lawsuit". Computer Business Review (2007-04-20). Retrieved on 2007-04-23.
  32. ^ Introduction to Software Patents published by the Japan Patent Office - see page 47 for discussion of Karmarkar's algorithm
  33. ^ Immersion Corporation Reports First Quarter 2006 Financial Results
  34. ^ The European Patents Register for EP patent application 0864145 includes a full copy of the file history.
  35. ^ a b Richard Stallman, Patents by stealth, New Scientist, February 5, 2005, issue 2485, page 28.
  36. ^ a b Richard Stallman, Patent absurdity, The Guardian, June 20, 2005
  37. ^ Key Patent To Shake Multimedia Industry, San Francisco Chronicle, November 15, 1993
  38. ^ Patent Office Reject Compton's NewMedia Patent, March 24, 1994
  39. ^ Small company makes big claims on XML patents, Martin LaMonica, CNET News.com, October 21, 2005
  40. ^ "Cingular Patenting the Emoticon :(". Cellular-news. Retrieved on 2007-04-21.
  41. ^ "Cingular Patents the Emoticon?". Slashdot. Retrieved on 2007-04-21.
  42. ^ "Cingular emoticon grab not so serious :-) say experts". The Register. Retrieved on 2007-04-21.
  43. ^ The USPTO "Public PAIR" system provides current status information for this US application under publication number "2006-0015812".
  44. ^ The European Patents Register for EP patent application 1784745 includes a full copy of the file history.
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