IANAL, but I'm surprised by the EFF's amicus brief. A large portion of it is an enumeration of the deleterious effects of NPE "trolls", but from my understanding of the case, it's purely about establishing better guidance on what is or isn't patentable under section 101. SCOTUS seems unlikely to be moved by the pain caused by NPE's, when Congress could readily change how patent infringement or licensing works for PE's vs. NPE's if they considered it a serious problem.
Obviously they still got the cert, though not of the particular case they wanted.
I'm interested to hear how some of the much brighter legal minds on hn would handicap this case. My uneducated guess is that the patentability of software will largely survive, but the Court will try to formulate a test designed to exclude claims that would be clearly too abstract were they not "instantiated" on a computer. Something like the Amazon 1-click patent would probably survive, while the Alice patents would not.
Obviously they still got the cert, though not of the particular case they wanted.
I'm interested to hear how some of the much brighter legal minds on hn would handicap this case. My uneducated guess is that the patentability of software will largely survive, but the Court will try to formulate a test designed to exclude claims that would be clearly too abstract were they not "instantiated" on a computer. Something like the Amazon 1-click patent would probably survive, while the Alice patents would not.