LQ PatentCast: Mastermine Software V Microsoft

In this enlightening review of Microsoft's successful non-infringement defense against Mastermine's software patent relating to pivot tables, Craige exposes the 4 layers that must be considered to properly interpret a patent claim.  Craige provides crucial insights into the subtleties of each layer that make the difference between successful patent enforcement and just getting close but falling short, as Mastermine did with their claims.  As a bonus, Craige takes this case as a rare opportunity to explore hybrid claiming techniques, showing the factors that courts look at to decide when to permit both method and apparatus elements to be recited in the same claim - which can produce very powerful claims, for example, to protect software!