No word yet from the U.S. Supreme Court on Bilski v. Kappos, the eagerly awaited decision which is likely to limit the scope (if not drive the final nail into the coffin) of allowable business method patents. You can find a description of the issues and stakes involved in my blog post on the Federal Circuit’s (lower court’s) machine-or-transformation test for business method/process patent applications.
Based on my reading of the November 2009 oral argument transcript and my conversations with patent experts, we predict that (1) the Patent Office’s rejection of Bilski’s application for a method of hedging risk in commodities trading will be upheld, (2) the Federal Circuit’s machine-or-transformation test will be invalidated as unduly limiting given the statutory language and history, BUT (3) we may see a new definition of patentable subject matter based upon some ethereal concept of “technology.”
The Supreme Court will next release decisions on Tuesday, June 1. Given the importance of this ruling to our software and Internet clients, we will post a link to the opinion and a brief summary on this blog as soon as it is issued, to be followed by a full analysis not long afterward.