US Supreme Court to rule on business method patents (full version)
01 June 2009
Eileen McDermott, New York
The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal filed by inventors Bernard Bilski and Rand Warsaw requesting it to reverse the Federal Circuit’s decision in In re Bilski, which changed the test for determining patentable subject matter in the US
The Court’s decision, when it makes it, could affect the patentability of software and business method patents.
The much anticipated Bilski decision was published on October 30. While the full panel of the Federal Circuit reaffirmed that business methods are patentable, it rejected its previous "useful, concrete and tangible result" test, saying the "machine-or-transformation" test set out by the Supreme Court is the proper test to apply.
The Bilski petition – filed by J Michael Jakes of Finnegan in January – asks the Court to consider two questions: 1) Whether the Federal Circuit erred by holding that a process must be tied to a particular machine or apparatus,...
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