nun-o | New Useful Non-Obvious

Well, that’s all she wrote, folks! This morning the Supreme Court issued its decision in Bilski v. Kappos.  Bilski is the patent law case that asked whether business methods should be considered patentable subject matter. (You can get a quick background on the case here or learn more about business methods and patentable subject matter here.)

You can read the opinion here (pdf) ==> Bilski_v_Kappos_08-964

I’ll be reading the opinion carefully and dissecting what it means for inventors and attorneys alike, but in a nutshell:

• the Court was unanimous in finding that the claims in the Bilski patent application were unpatentable because “they are attempts to patent abstract ideas.”
• the Machine or Transformation test is not the sole test for patentability.
• business methods are patentable processes: “The Court, therefore, need not define further what constitutes a patentable “process,” beyond pointing to the definition of that term provided in §100(b) and looking to the guideposts in Benson, Flook, and Diehr.”
• no additional test was given: “In disapproving an exclusive machine-or-transformation test, we by no means foreclose the Federal Circuit’s development of other limiting criteria that further the purposes of the Patent Act and are not inconsistent with its text.”