Uniloc Patent Case Against Rackspace Tossed for Bogus Patents 76
netbuzz writes "A federal judge in Texas, presiding over a district notorious for favoring patent trolls, has summarily dismissed all claims relating to a case brought by Uniloc USA against Rackspace for [Linux] allegedly infringing upon [Uniloc's] patents. Red Hat defended Rackspace in the matter and issued a press release saying: 'In dismissing the case, Chief Judge Leonard Davis found that Uniloc's claim was unpatentable under Supreme Court case law that prohibits the patenting of mathematical algorithms. This is the first reported instance in which the Eastern District of Texas has granted an early motion to dismiss finding a patent invalid because it claimed unpatentable subject matter.'"
You can't patent floating point math after all.
A 1955 patent issued in 1995 (Score:0, Informative)
Claim 1 might have been novel in 1955 but the patent was issued in 1995. 40 years late must be close enough for Govt work.
1. A method for processing floating-point numbers, each floating-point number having at least a sign portion, an exponent portion and a mantissa portion, comprising the steps of:
converting a floating-point number memory register representation to a floating-point register representation;
rounding the converted floating-point number;
performing an arithmetic computation upon said rounded number resulting in a new floating-point value; and
converting the resulting new floating-point register value to a floating-point memory register representation.