The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed today the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s decision in the “Bilski” case. In doing so, it could be the first nail in the coffin of what are often called “software patents”. However, the ruling is narrow and does not completely eliminate the vagueness in patent-eligibility that has exacerbated the threat of patents to software freedom.

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) and Extreme Networks, Inc., today jointly announced that an agreement has been reached to dismiss the GPL lawsuit filed by SFLC against Extreme Networks on behalf of two principal developers of BusyBox — Erik Andersen and Rob Landley.