The U.S. Supreme Court is slated to hear arguments tomorrow on whether software can continue to be patented, The Washington Post reports: "The case, Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank, focuses on software built to eliminate 'settlement risk' in currency and financial transactions where money is held in escrow and one party could renege on a deal and leave the other holding the bag. Alice Corp. claims that CLS Bank offers a service that infringes on its patent."
In a 1981 case, the court ruled that patents for inventions that tied a computer program to a real-world application were permissible, but patents involving solely a "mathemetical forumula" were not, The Post reports.
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