UK Today News: US Supreme Court Rejects Bilski and Warsaw’s Bid For Expanding Business Method Patents
US Supreme Court, Bilski : The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled against expanding business method patents. The court rejected the bid by Bernard L. Bilski and Rand A. Warsaw, founders of a Pittsburgh company, for protection of a method of hedging weather-related risk in energy prices.
The US Supreme Court
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the court: “The patent application here can be rejected under our precedents on the unpatentability of abstract ideas. The court, therefore, need not define further what constitutes a patentable process.”
Justice Kennedy said the Supreme Court was not in favor of this idea and he added: “There are reasons to doubt whether the test should be the sole criterion for determining the patentability of inventions in the Information Age.”
However, method patents are not new to business circles and has been quite a controversial issue, with certain companies being in favor of broad patent rights, while others insist that ome business methods are not ‘real’ inventions and hence, there is no need for patent protection.
