So I was all set to write about this decision by the Supreme Court, which once again shows just how far afield the current court is on constitutional issues. The details of the case are uninteresting, it’s only worth noting because it shows the lengths that “Justices” Scalia, Rehnquist, and Thomas are willing to go to torture the poor old Constitution.

Then I heard on the radio about this decision (in Festo v. SMC), which deals with patents. To oversimplify, there’s a rule that says that you can’t avoid violating a patent by making trivial changes to the patented invention. An appeals court ruled that this rule did not apply to patents that had been amended during the application process. Because most patents are amended during the application process, this decision basically eliminated the “doctrine of equivalents” for the majority of the patents that are currently in force. I’m honestly not sure how the ruling will affect the intellectual property landscape, but it bears watching.