US court throws out most software patents

Much of the patent portfolio of some of the world's biggest software companies has become worthless overnight, thanks to a ruling yesterday by the US patent court.
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) in Washington DC has decided that in the future, instead of automatically granting a patent for a business practice, there will be a specific testing procedure to determine how patentable is that process.
The decision is a nearly complete reversal of the court's controversial State Street Bank judgement of 1998, which started the stampede for patenting business practices.
Randy Lipsitz, a patent specialist at Kramer Levin in New York, said the ruling is likely to hit certain industries very hard, especially insurance, banking, accounting, and software.

Original Article

Oh no, Microsoft! My cracked copy of Windows XP Pro is now legal, I think.

 

woot that means i can legally install OSX on my quad core desktop XD.

 

Not in the slightest. I think you need to learn about the difference between patents and copyright.