Anthony Kennedy (US Supreme Court Justice) on software patents

Anthony Kennedy, or Justice Kennedy, is a judge on the US Supreme Court.

Official statements

The Bilski hearing

(see: The Bilski hearing transcript, as text)

it’s difficult for me to think that Congress would want to — would have wanted to give only one person the capacity to issue insurance

I wonder if he thinks the same about giving only one person the capacity to write video playing software.

Discussing Diehr, Kennedy says:

[...]you don’t know much from that language. But that was something that you could touch, that you could see, that looked like a machine, the substance was different before the process and after the process.

Kennedy agreed with this statement from Justice Stevens:

Stevens: I don’t understand why that isn’t just the application of a process, which – which is not itself patentable subject matter, to a particular machine that can use process

External links

• Wikipedia: Anthony Kennedy