Court hears important patent case

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court heard argument Monday in a case that might produce a modern definition of patent eligibility, with a significant effect on software.

In order to obtain a U.S. patent, a creator or inventor in part must produce some thing that does something useful, not just an abstract idea.

In Washington, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in a case involving inventors Bernard Bilski and Rand Warsaw, ruled that the only process it would consider eligible for a patent has to be "tied to a particular machine or apparatus," and has to "transform a particular article into a different state or thing," Scotusblog.com reported.

The standard set by the Federal Circuit is now referred to as the "machine-or-transformation" test.

Bilski and Warsaw, with their company in Pittsburgh, were seeking to patent a method for hedging the risk in commodities trading based on the weather, Legal Newsline reported. But the Federal Circuit, which deals primarily with intellectual property, ruled on October that the invention was not patentable because it was not tied to a machine or was too abstract.

The inventors asked the high court to decide whether patent protection be limited to inventions involving machines and transformative processes, or should the law also protect business methods and software.

Monday, the justices, including Justice Sotomayor, the court's newest member, apparently disagreed with argument advocating a patent for a hedging method, The New York Times reported.

A ruling in the case should come before the court recesses for the summer in late June.