For the first time in almost 30 years, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday considered the issue of what types of technology should be eligible for patent protection when it heard oral arguments in Bilski v. Kappos.
Across the board, the justices indicated a deep skepticism toward the invention described in the patent application at issue, which was rejected by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and describes a method for trading commodities. Some of the justices went even further–expressing both a fair amount of disdain for the idea of granting broad “method” patents and a concern that ruling in favor of the petitioners would lead to patent grants on fundamental ways of conducting business or organizing human behavior. (Click here for a related story by the National Law Journal’s Supreme Court correspondent, Tony Mauro.)
