Supreme Court Confirms The Patentability of Business Methods, But Sets A Standard That Many Such Patents May Not Satisfy

In its Bilski v. Kappos decision earlier this week, the Supreme Court confirmed that business methods can be patented. But the five-justice majority held the claimed invention at issue, for a commodities trading hedging technique, was an unpatentable “abstract idea,” and the same analysis likely would doom many other patents for business methods. Moreover, the other four justices would have eliminated business method patents altogether.