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Featured news
US Supreme Court grants certiorari in landmark ‘business method’ patent case
On 1 June 2009, the US Supreme Court granted Bilski’s petition for a writ of certiorari (a procedure for seeking judicial review). The court had to consider the following two questions raised in the petition.
• “Whether the Federal Circuit erred by holding that a ‘process’ must be tied to a particular machine or apparatus, or transform a particular article into a different state or thing (‘machine-or-transformation test’), to be eligible for patenting under US law, despite this Court’s precedent declining to limit the broad statutory grant of patent eligibility for ‘any’ new and useful process beyond excluding patents for ‘laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas’?”
• “Whether the Federal Circuit’s ‘machine-or–transformation’ test for patent eligibility, which effectively forecloses meaningful patent protection to many business methods, contradicts the clear Congressional intent that patents protect ‘method(s) of doing or conducting business’.” |
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