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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 28 2013 @ 04:47 PM EDT |
Perhaps I'd agree if you stated the use of "abstract" by the Federal Circuit
was different then what I said.
But somehow I think SCOTUS would disagree
with your perspective. And... given recent rulings, I wonder if the Federal
Circuit might be more inclined in the direction of abstract as I use it as
well.
All bolding below mine for emphasis.
As was presented in
Bilski:
The patent examiner rejected petitioners’ application,
explaining that it “‘is not implemented on a specific appa-ratus and merely
manipulates [an] abstract idea and solves a purely mathematical problem without
any limita-tion to a practical application, therefore, the invention is not
directed to the technological arts.’”
The Board of
Patent Appeals and Interfer-ences affirmed, concluding that the application
involved only mental steps that do not transform physical matter and was
directed to an abstract idea.
The United States Court
of Appeals for the Federal Circuit heard the case en banc and
affirmed.
Judge Rader would have found petitioners’
claims were an unpatentable abstract idea.
Judge Rader..... and
this on a process of hedging risk. That's actually a bit of a surprise given
I've been under the impression Judge Rader rather likes
patents.
Section 101 thus specifies four independent categories of
inventions or discoveries that are eligible for protection: processes, machines,
manufactures, and compositions of matter.
The Court’s
precedents provide three specific exceptions to §101’s broad patent-eligibility
principles: “laws of na-ture, physical phenomena, and abstract
ideas.”
Even though petitioners’ application is not
categorically outside of §101 under the two broad and atextual ap-proaches the
Court rejects today, that does not mean it is a “process” under
§101.
On the Supreme's own analysis:
Indeed, all
members of the Court agree that the patent application at issue here falls
out-side of §101 because it claims an abstract
idea.
Claims 1 and 4 in petitioners’ application
explain the basic concept of hedging, or protecting against risk: “Hedging is a
funda-mental economic practice long prevalent in our system of commerce and
taught in any introductory finance class.”
The concept
of hedging, described in claim 1 and reduced to a mathemati-cal formula in claim
4, is an unpatentable abstract idea, just like the algorithms at issue in
Benson and Flook.
Petitioners’ remaining claims are
broad examples of how hedging can be used in commodities and energy markets.
Flook established that limiting an abstract idea to one field of use or adding
token post solution components did not make the concept patentable. That is
exactly what the remaining claims in petitioners’ application
do.
Given the recent ruling in in CLS Bank by the Federal Circuit,
and the opinion as outlined by the Supreme's above in Bilski:
I think your
opinion on how the Supreme's would view your wage calculation process might be a
tad misplaced.
Of course, you could always attempt to explain how
less-like-math your process is compared with the process claimed in
Bilski.
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