Bilski v. Kappos Argued
Bilski v. Kappos was argued before the Supreme Court. Professor Lyle Denniston’s “A Patent Dispute for the Information Age” is a good place to start, and SCOTUSWIKI has links to various case documents. At stake: Can business processes be patented?
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Apparently from the oral argument (I haven’t had a chance to read it yet), attorney for Biliski says, ““But today the raw materials are just as likely to be information or electronic signals, and to simply root us in the industrial era because that’s what we knew I think would be wrong and contrary to the forward-looking aspect of patent law.””
I’ve talked about this error previously. Information is never a raw material, and this mistake is akin to the idea that image infringement in Second Life is “only virtual” on the assumption that Second Life is “a virtual world”.
Just a little epistemology goes a long way here.
On the other hand, if one has accepted the task of advocating a client’s interests, one might be forgiven proffering this kind of epistemologically unsound argument. Observers can only hope the Court is sufficiently sophisticated to see through them.