By Drew Clark for Intellectual Property Watch
WASHINGTON, DC - The chief US appeals court that rules on patent disputes has squarely reconsidered whether the United States' 1998 decision to allow greater berth for business method patents was the right intellectual property policy.
Adding heft to the position of changing course on business method patents was the US Patent and Trademark Office, which challenged a patent application on a method for financial hedging by inventors Bernard Bilski and Rand Warsaw.
The USPTO urged the court to reject the patent as ineligible subject matter. It offered a standard for invalidating the patent that demonstrated a dramatic change of course for the US government over the past 10 years.