Nov. 9 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Supreme Court justices signaled resistance to affording patent protection to abstract business innovations as they debated a case that has drawn an unprecedented level of corporate interest.
In an hour-long argument that featured questions about speed-dating and techniques to keep law students awake, a majority of the court’s justices challenged a lawyer for two men seeking a patent for a method of hedging weather-related risks when buying and selling energy.
Justice John Paul Stevens told the lawyer that “none of our cases has ever approved a rule such as you advocate.” Chief Justice John Roberts said the method was “classic commodity hedging that’s been going on for centuries.”
The court’s ruling, likely to affect billions of dollars in patent rights, will be its first since 1981 on what types of innovations qualify for legal protection.
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More on the Supreme Court Case Concerning Patent Rights of November 9, 2009
ReplyDeleteA Federal Circuit Court decision of 1998 “State Street Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Financial Group, 149 F.3r 1368 (Fed. Cir. 1998) has been the basis of patent rulings for the past decade. It established a “useful, concrete and tangible result “ test for patentability.
On October 30, 2008 a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit invalidated patent rights under application for a method of managing commodity trading risk, in re Bilski, 2008 WL 4757110 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 30, 2008). The reason was that this patent involved a “mental process that was not implemented by a machine or other intangible object”.
The argument before the Supreme Court is that the code (Section 101) does not mention any type of machine or “transform specific subject matter”.
Needless to say, patent holders around the world are now wondering if they too will be deemed to have patents of no value. The electronics and software industries will be affected. Patent holders of automated trading systems, risk management models and tax avoidance structures will be big losers if the Supreme Court upholds this decision.
http://news.findlaw.com/andrews.bt/int/20091111/20091111_bilski.html