100+ Innovative American Businesses and Organizations Send Letter to Congress Opposing Expansion of America Invents Act’s “Covered Business Method Patent” Program
Yesterday, 100+ innovative American businesses sent a letter to Congress expressing strong support for the patent system and opposing expansion of the “Covered Business Method” (CBM) program. Signatories to the letter include some of America’s most innovative companies including a number of leading software companies. Software publishing companies and industry organizations signing the letter included Microsoft, Adobe Systems, IBM, and the BSA- The Software Alliance. According to the letter, “The US patent system for more than 200 years has succeeded spectacularly in promoting ‘the progress of science and useful arts,’ as the Founders intended, in part because it has always provided the same incentives for all types of inventions. To expand and make permanent the CBM program would be to turn ill-advisedly and irrevocably in a new direction — discriminating against an entire class of technology innovation.” The letter goes on to say expanding the CBM program “would have far-reaching implications, because data processing is integralto everything from cutting-edge cancer therapies to safety systems that allow cars to respondto road conditions in real time to prevent crashes. Subjecting data processing patents to theCBM program would thus create uncertainty and risk that discourage investment in anynumber of fields where we should be trying to spur continued innovation.”
A full copy of the letter can be found here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/170311368/Letter-100-Innovative-Businesses-and-Organizations-Send-Letter-to-Congress-Objecting-to-Covered-Business-Method-Patent-Legislative-Proposals
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