US Supreme Court fails to clarify the patentability of business method

Added on : 06 July 2010
Filed under : Patents, Designs & Copyright

Unlike Europe, the USA does not exclude business methods from patent protection. But in a decision of the Federal Circuit in In re Biski there were signs that the USA might be tightening up and limiting the opportunities for patenting business methods. The original case, filed in 1997 was for the patent of a method of hedging risks in commodity trading and was rejected by the Federal Circuit because it “manipulates an abstract idea”, which was not enough to grant it patent status.

The decision of the Federal Circuit in In re Biski was appealed and now, finally, the Supreme Court has issued its own decision, which upheld the Federal Circuit’s decision, but rejected its attempts to introduce additional tests for what is or is not patentable. Therefore, rather than the Supreme Court providing clarity on the thorny issue of the patentability of business methods, as many US legal commentators had hoped, it simply acknowledged that sometimes business methods will be patentable and sometimes they won’t!

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