US District Court Judge Andrew Gilford (Central District of California) granted a summary judgment motion (PDF, 47KB) in DealerTrack v. Huber et al., finding DealerTrack’s patent (US 7,181,427) — for an automated credit application processing system — invalid due to the recent In re Bilski court decision that requires a patent to either involve “transformation” […]
Just got word today that the US Supreme Court has granted certiorari to the In re Bilski matter regarding business software and process patents. Given the potential implications for new and existing patents, it should be interesting to see how the Supremes rule on this one. ..bruce..
My newest Baseline column is up, and in it, I talk about technology lifecycles that can cause you grief: Each technology is on its own product lifecycle, which may or may not match with your organization’s business and development lifecycles. In particular, there are certain cycle mismatch patterns that commonly occur in organizations looking to […]
The US Federal Court of Appeals ruling upholding the lower court decision for In re Bilski has now been appealed to the US Supreme Court: Not since 1981 has the Supreme Court undertaken to spell out the kinds of inventions that are eligible for patent rights — the exclusive rights to produce or use an invented […]
[Cross-posted from brucefwebster.com] I’m currently writing a series of columns for Baseline on how to deal with frozen or reduced IT budgets due to the current economic troubles. Here are the first two columns: Performing IT Project Triage Pulling the Plug on IT Project Next up: how to deal with personnel issues. ..bruce..
Classic patterns in disputed IT project: Hertz v. Accenture
Just ran across this article at the always-irreverent-but-usually-spot-on Register, an IT news site out of England. The standard patterns of a troubled IT project are so evident in this one report that I may well use it as a case study for my CS 428 (“Real-world software engineering”) class this fall. Here are some of […]
Neverending Story pattern: School District ERP system late, over-budget
A story a few days ago caught my eye, not because it was unusual, but because it follows so familiar a pattern. Here are a few excerpts from the article: MANATEE — Late nights, hefty contracts and humming computers are a norm in the district’s School Support Center, where employees are working to fix a […]
Minnesota DMV software project: Faulty Towers/Neverending Story patterns
In my 2000 white paper, “Patterns in IT Litigation: System Failure (1976-2000)” [PDF], which I researched and wrote while at PricewaterhouseCoopers, I describe six broad fact patterns to classify the types of software system implementation failure. One of those patterns I named “Faulty Towers”: The client buys the system from [or has the system developed […]
![The Meltdown/Spectre CPU bugs: a dramatic global case of the “Unintended Consequences” pattern [UPDATED 4/4/18]](http://bfwa.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/intel-cpu-150x150.jpg "The Meltdown/Spectre CPU bugs: a dramatic global case of the “Unintended Consequences” pattern [UPDATED 4/4/18]")
Back in 2000, PricewaterhouseCooper published my research white paper, “Patterns in IT Litigation: Systems Failure (1976-2000)” (PDF). This paper reflected research I and my staff had done over several months on roughly 120 two- or three-party lawsuits involving information technology. I found that almost all of these lawsuits fell into one or two of six […]