Software Patents: The debate on software patents has taken a decisive turn this summer.  The US Supreme Court case "Alice vs. CLS" is providing a precedent that threatens invalidation for hundreds of thousands of software patents. 

For software engineers and mathematicians, this injects a dose of common sense into what had been a looming threat over the abuse of scientific openness -- research leads to better methods, these are published in open journals.  They are coded into software and the resulting methods are then patented and off limits to both scientists and enterprises alike.

"The courts are [now] sending a pretty clear message: you can't take a commonplace human activity, do it with a computer, and call that a patentable invention.

"The real question is how far the courts will take this logic. Because strictly speaking, all computer programs perform sequences of mathematical operations that could — in principle — be performed by a human being."