Patent-eligible subject matter revisited: In Re Bilski.
Mondaq Business Briefing › Nbr. 2008, March 2008
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Patent-eligible subject matter revisited: In Re Bilski.
On October 30, 2008, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (the "Federal Circuit") issued its en banc decision in In re Bilski, which addressed the standard for determining whether method claims recite patent-eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. s. 101.1 At issue were non-machine-implemented claims directed to a business method for managing consumption risk costs of a commodity sold by a commodity provider. The court held that the claimed method did not recite eligible subject matter under Section 101, because the method was neither tied to a particular machine, nor did it transform physical objects or substances, or representations thereof, into a different state or thing. In rendering its decision, the court repudiated as insufficient the "useful, concrete and tangible result" test for subject-matter eligibility but stopped short of explicitly overruling State Street Bank & Trust v. Signature Financial Group, Inc.2
Background Section 101 poses a threshold question in patent law: What type of subject matter must an invention comprise in order to be eligible for patent protection? This thresho...See the full content of this document
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