Sunday, November 16, 2008
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
JURIST - Paper Chase: Federal Circuit rules against business methods patentability
JURIST - Paper Chase: Federal Circuit rules against business methods patentability: "Federal Circuit rules against business methods patentability"
[JURIST] In a landmark intellectual property decision Thursday, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit [official website] ruled [opinion, PDF] 9-3 that a business concept for hedging risk in the field of commodities trading was too vague for patent protection. The case on an application by Bernard Bilski, the CEO of a company called Weatherwise, could affect the validity of thousands of patents, particularly in the financial services and software industries. Relying on the "machine-or-transformation test" established in the 1972 Supreme Court case Gottschalk v. Benson [text] and reaffirmed in the 1981 case Diamond v. Diehr [text], the court ruled that business methods do not meet the standard for patentability under US law. The majority concluded that Bilski's patent application did not meet the definition of "process" under 35 U.S.C. 101 [text] because it did not involve a machine and did not physically transform anything. The New York Times has more.
[JURIST] In a landmark intellectual property decision Thursday, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit [official website] ruled [opinion, PDF] 9-3 that a business concept for hedging risk in the field of commodities trading was too vague for patent protection. The case on an application by Bernard Bilski, the CEO of a company called Weatherwise, could affect the validity of thousands of patents, particularly in the financial services and software industries. Relying on the "machine-or-transformation test" established in the 1972 Supreme Court case Gottschalk v. Benson [text] and reaffirmed in the 1981 case Diamond v. Diehr [text], the court ruled that business methods do not meet the standard for patentability under US law. The majority concluded that Bilski's patent application did not meet the definition of "process" under 35 U.S.C. 101 [text] because it did not involve a machine and did not physically transform anything. The New York Times has more.
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