IEEE-USA Amicus Brief to the United States Supreme Court -

IEEE-USA Amicus Brief to the United States Supreme Court

Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Int’l, et al., 573 U.S. ___ (2014), Docket No. 13-298

Principal author, Section II, IEEE-USA Amicus Brief. Brief submitted Jan. 28, 2014. Section II explains foundational concepts of computer science, and fundamental connections between computing systems and physics.

Decided Jun. 19, 2014. The Court agreed with main point of the IEEE Brief: that a computer programmed with software is a kind of tangible machine. However, the Court stated that merely programming an abstract idea into a computer is not sufficient, on its own, to make the idea non-abstract.

Further, the Court introduced a surprising new category of abstract idea: human invention that has been in sufficiently widespread use for a sufficiently long period of time. The new category was used to invalidate the particular invention in Alice.