Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
example, in the 1980s companies developing IBM-compatible computers needed to de-
velop their own implementations of the BIOS (basic input/output system). A “clean
room” software development strategy helps ensure a company's software program does
not duplicate any code in another company's product.
In this strategy two independent teams work on the project. The first team is respon-
sible for determining how the competitor's program works. It may access the program's
source code, if it is available. If it cannot get access to the source, it may disassemble the
object code of the competitor's product. It also reads the product's user manuals and
technical documentation. The first team produces a technical specification for the soft-
ware product. The specification simply states how the product is supposed to function.
It says nothing about how to implement the functionality.
The second team is isolated from the first team. Members of this team have never
seen any code or documentation from the competitor's product. They rely solely on
the technical specification to develop, code, and debug the software meeting the spec-
ification. By isolating the code developers from the competitor's product, the company
developing the competing product can demonstrate that its employees have not copied
code, even unconsciously.
Until the early 1980s, the US Patent and Trademark Office refused to grant patents
for computer software. Its position was that a computer program is a mathematical
algorithm, not a process or a machine.
However, a US Supreme Court decision in 1981 forced the Patent and Trademark
Office to begin considering software patents. In the case of
Diamond v. Diehr
, the
Supreme Court ruled that an invention related to curing rubber could be patented. Even
though the company's principal innovation was the use of a computer to control the
heating of the rubber, the invention was a new process for rubber molding, and hence
patentable.
Further court rulings compelled the Patent and Trademark Office to begin issuing
patents for a much broader range of software. In 1992 the Court of Appeals for the
Federal Circuit considered a patent application from a company that had developed a
computerized monitoring device that analyzed signals from an electrocardiograph to
determine whether a heart attack victim was at risk of a dangerous arrhythmia. The
court ruled that the software was patentable because the numbers being manipulated
by the computer program represented concrete values in the real world. Further court
rulings reinforced the idea that computer software and data structures could be patented
in the United States [114].
Since then, hundreds of thousands of software patents have been granted [115]. Mi-
crosoft alone files about 3,000 patent applications every year [116]. Companies generate
revenue by licensing their software patents to other companies. It's also common for sev-
eral technology companies to hold patents that cover different but essential components
of a commercial product. By signing an agreement to cross-license each other's patents,
all of the companies are free to bring their own versions of the product to market.
