Slashdot Mirror
"Bilski" Case May End Business Method Patents
hey sends us to a blog at NYTimes outlining the upcoming appeal of the case known as "re Bilski," which could spell the end of patents on methods of doing business later this year. One patent expert is quoted: "I think this is the unraveling of business method patents... I think there is a process we are going to go through to get there and the Supreme Court is going to be the one that decides it." But another expert thinks the case is unlikely to bring down the whole class of patents: "Definitions of business method patents always end up being circular. You can't really ban something unless you can define it and no one is offering a definition we can use."
But that is the way it is supposed to work. You can patent the device that predicts heart attacks, but you can't stop people from making other devices that predict heart attacks if they use a different method than yours. The idea "lets predict heart attacks" is not patentable, the machine that does it is.