Software Patents

In a closely watched ruling (maybe only by us software people) the U.S. Supreme court ruled unanimously in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank that you can’t get a software patent for an abstract idea for the reason that it is simply a building block of human ingenuity. In other words, it doesn’t pass even the first test for patentability let alone those of novelty, obviousness, and vagueness.

This ruling does not imply an end to software patents, only that they must be more substantial than an idea that could be computerized and would actually need to demonstrate improvement to some actual function (i.e. actually be implemented).

Another interesting tangent on this ruling is that Alice Corp. is regarded as a “non-practicing entity” i.e. a patent troll.

Read coverage from:

• The Wall Street Journal
• USA Today
• NPR
• Fortune

Software

• ENGYS announced the release of Helyx-OS v2.1.0, the open source GUI for OpenFOAM.
• A new version of XFlow was recently released. [PDF]
• Foam-Extend 3.1 was released.
• PTC released Creo 3.0 including the ability to import models in other CAD formats.
• SU2 version 3.2 was released.
• CFD Support announced the release of Turbomachinery CFD version 14.06 (based on OpenFOAM).

Applied Math Modeling released CoolSim 4.3. Click image for article. Image from Data Center Knowledge.

Events and Business

• CD-adapco announced a partnership with researchers at the Univ. of Stuttgart for the profiling and benchmarking of STAR-CCM+ on petascale computers.
• Deadlines are fast approaching for the 2014 FLOW-3D Americas Users Conference including early bird registration (01 July), and abstract due date (11 July).
• You have until 31 August to submit your entry to CD-adapco’s 2015 Calendar Contest. Maybe yours will be the one who gets the most social media votes and wins a cool prize.
• The second NAFEMS European Conference on Multiphysics Simulation will be held 21-22 October 2014 in Manchester, UK.
• ESI reported a 7% decrease in Q1 revenue due largely to the company’s shift to service deals. [Nothing reported about OpenFOAM’s contributions to their numbers.]

Reading

• Visualising Data shares the best of the visualization web for April 2014.
• The software catalog for 2014 from NASA’s technology transfer program is available online.
• The June 2014 issue of DEVELOP3D is now available.
• ENGINEERING.com delves into ANSYS Workbench and learns about its future, a future that goes beyond cloud and integration and into a fully unified, immersive, multi-physics environment.

Thresholds of Silence

Combining the old and the new, art and science, geometry and aeroacoustics, the Buitenschot Landscape Art Park near Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport uses well planned and deeply cut ridges in the nearby landscape to reduce the propagation of ground level aircraft noise.

Farmers have known for quite some time that deeply plowing a field creates a very quiet landscape. Through study of the noise sources architects designed these V-shaped ridges for the same purpose while at the same time creating a publicly usable green space. Seems like a win-win to me.

The landscape architect calls the ridges the Thresholds of Silence.

Buitenschot Landscape Art Park at Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport uses these ridges to reduce noise pollution. Image from pauldekort.nl.

P.S. Apologies if some of this news is repeated from last week. I was in a rush and didn’t do a good job separating old from new news.