Posts Tagged ‘patent law’

The purpose of this blog post is to simply summarize the Bilski case and its relationship to Section 101 of the U.S. code.

Summary of the case

This case dealt with a patent application that described a method for providing a fixed bill energy contract to consumers.  The invention calculated the amount a consumer would pay for a future bill based on prior bills.  For further details on the application see patent application number 08/833,892.  The patent examiner rejected all 11 claims on the grounds that “the invention is not implemented on a specific apparatus and merely manipulates an abstract idea and solves a purely mathematical problem without any limitation to a practical application, therefore, the invention is not directed to the technological arts.”  The applicant appealed the rejection to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI).  The BPAI affirmed the rejection, on different grounds than the “technological arts” test.  Their reasoning was that the Applicants’ claims did not involve any patent-eligible transformation.  Finally the applicants appealed the rejection to the Federal Circuit, which upheld the rejection, 9-3.

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