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The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

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You are mistaken. | 335 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
You are mistaken.
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, July 12 2012 @ 12:56 PM EDT
No, it wasn't. There was no mention of a computer. If there was, the machine
or transformation test would not have been used by the Fed. Cir. against it.
There was no mention of a computer in the claims of Bilski and no claim of an
implied computer in any argument submitted by Bilski. Bilski and the PTO both
stipulated that Bilski was unrelated to software or computers.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

From Bilski - No Computer
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, July 12 2012 @ 01:06 PM EDT
Petitioners' application seeks patent protection for a claimed invention that
explains how buyers and sellers of commodities in the energy market can protect,
or hedge, against the risk of price changes. The key claims are claims 1 and 4.
Claim 1 describes a series of steps instructing how to hedge risk. Claim 4 puts
the concept articulated in claim 1 into a simple mathematical formula.

Claim 1 consists of the following steps:

"(a) initiating a series of transactions between said commodity
provider and consumers of said commodity wherein said consumers purchase said
commodity 3224*3224 at a fixed rate based upon historical averages, said fixed
rate corresponding to a risk position of said consumers;

"(b) identifying market participants for said commodity having a
counter-risk position to said consumers; and

"(c) initiating a series of transactions between said commodity
provider and said market participants at a second fixed rate such that said
series of market participant transactions balances the risk position of said
series of consumer transactions." App. 19-20.

The remaining claims explain how claims 1 and 4 can be applied to allow energy
suppliers and consumers to minimize the risks resulting from fluctuations in
market demand for energy. For example, claim 2 claims "[t]he method of
claim 1 wherein said commodity is energy and said market participants are
transmission distributors." Id., at 20. Some of these claims also suggest
familiar statistical approaches to determine the inputs to use in claim 4's
equation. For example, claim 7 advises using well-known random analysis
techniques to determine how much a seller will gain "from each transaction
under each historical weather pattern." Id., at 21.

The patent examiner rejected petitioners' application, explaining that it
"`is -----not------ implemented on a specific apparatus and merely
manipulates [an] abstract idea and solves a purely mathematical problem without
any limitation to a practical application, therefore, the invention is not
directed to the technological arts.'" App. to Pet. for Cert. 148a. The
Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences affirmed, concluding that the
application involved only mental steps that do not transform physical matter and
was directed to an abstract idea. Id., at 181a-186a.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit heard the case en
banc and affirmed. The case produced five different opinions. Students of patent
law would be well advised to study these scholarly opinions.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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