Most people outside the IP community have never heard of Bernard Bilski. But among IP lawyers he is somewhat famous. That’s because his struggle to patent an invention could determine the future of business-method patents.
Bilski’s fight began more than 10 years ago when he submitted a patent application seeking exclusive rights to a method of using hedge contracts to reduce the risk that a commodity’s wholesale price might change. His process is pretty simple: When a commodity seller makes a sale to a consumer at one fixed price, he or she then makes a second set of hedging transactions at a second price.
