Re:Saved by Alice
by kyberias on Saturday July 01, 2017 @11:41AM
(#14677545)
To be fair, the linked page does not adequately explain what Alice is. To me it was clear that it was some important court case and they just want to call it "Alice". But I can understand why it might be hard to understand for some.
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The first sentence of the article is:
> In Alice v. CLS Bank, the Supreme Court ruled ...
That introduces the context pretty early and clearly.
And "Alice v. CLS Bank" is linked to an article that explains exactly what it is: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/06/bad-day-bad-patents-su...
You can't be serious. The very first words of the article are:
"In Alice v. CLS Bank, the Supreme Court ruled that ..."
That makes it clear that "Alice v. CLS Bank" is a court case, and Alice was the name of one of the litigants. That phrase is linked to another article, whose first sentence is:
"In a long-awaited decision, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank today."
Anyone older than six who can't figure this out on their own should be ashamed of themselves.
I would think that "Alice" used by itself refers to the litigant of that name. The fact that it's used as a shorthand for the case itself is very much not obvious.
It is common practice to abbreviate the name of a case. For example, "Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka" is almost invariably referred to as "Brown vs Board of Education" or sometimes even just "Brown v. Board". "Dred Scott v. Sanford" is invariable referred to simply as "Dred Scott". "Obergefell vs Hodges" is usually referred to simply as "Obergefell." This is particularly true when the context makes the shorter reference unambiguous.
That's fine if you're familiar with that convention, but if you're not then I wouldn't expect you to understand it straight off.
I see nothing wrong with the article abbreviating it in this way, but your ridiculously condescending comment is way out of line.