Bilski v. Kappos (KyleR)
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Bilski v. Kappos
Overview
- patent application at issue:
- how commodities buyers and sellers in the energy market can hedge against risk of price changes
- Claim 1: series of steps for how to hedge risk
- Claim 4: places Claim 1 into a mathematical formula
- how commodities buyers and sellers in the energy market can hedge against risk of price changes
- patent application denied by patent examiner, Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences agreed, Federal Circuit agreed, Supreme Court agreed
- Federal Circuit says a process is patent eligible if it:
- is tied to a particular machine or apparatus,
- transforms an article into a different state or thing
- Supreme Court denies patent eligibility because it constitutes an abstract idea
- Court does not need to define further what constitutes a patentable process
Opinion of Court (Kennedy)
- Court precedents provide three exceptions to Section 101's patent-eligibility principles:
- "laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas"
- definition of "process" (Section 100(b)):
- a process is a "process, art or method, and included a new use of a known process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter, or material"
- machine-or-transformation test as sole test for what constitutes a process is wrong
- Court is unaware of any "ordinary, contemporary, common meaning" of the work "process" that requires it be linked to a machine or transformation
- Court is unaware of any "ordinary, contemporary, common meaning" of the work "method" that would exclude business methods from patent eligibility
- this particular claim is not patentable subject matter because it is an abstract idea
Concurring opinion (Stevens)
- wants to "restore patent law to its historical and constitutional moorings."
- any series of steps that is not an abstract idea should not constitute a "process"
- business methods, for instance
- Court did not provide a satisfactory description of what constitutes an unpatentable abstract idea
- the term "process" has a unique meaning in patent law
- cannot define "process" based on contextual clues because the definition includes the term "process"
- must look to history to define "process"
- history has always held that a method of doing business is not a process
Concurring opinion (Breyer)
- agrees with Stevens that business methods are not patentable processes
Back to Course Notes (KyleR)
