Supreme Court Rules Against Expansion of Business-Method Patents
The Supreme Court ruled that two inventors’ patent of a method of hedging weather-related risk in energy prices may not be granted. The high court unanimously agreed with a lower-court ruling that said a process is eligible for a patent only if it is “tied to a particular machine or apparatus” or if it “transforms a particular article into a different state or thing.”
The justices agreed with an appeals court that the method was too abstract to be patented. The Supreme Court used a different analysis to reach that conclusion, disagreeing with the legal test used by the lower court. Read the Wall Street Journal article on the court decision.
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