Supreme Court relaxes limits on innovations that can be patented

Washington Post (Whoriskey) - The Supreme Court on Monday loosened the limits on the kinds of inventions that are eligible for patent protection in a case that was closely watched for its impacts on innovation. At issue was a bid by two inventors to patent a business method for hedging risk in buying energy. The high court unanimously rejected the inventors' claim, deeming their innovation too abstract to qualify for patent protection. But in doing so, it also rejected a lower court's reasoning that only inventions involving machinery or physical "transformations" are eligible for patents.
"This age puts the possibility of innovation in the hands of more people and raises new difficulties for patent law," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in the court's opinion. "The patent law faces a great challenge in striking the balance between protecting inventors and not granting monopolies over procedures that others would discover by independent, creative application of general principles. Nothing in this opinion should be read to take a position on where that balance ought to be struck." ... "It wasn't the roof-shaking decision that people expected," said Harold C. Wegner, a patent law expert and the author of a newsletter on patent topics. "It leaves open a lot of questions over the extent to which business methods are patent eligible." Hat Tip: SSTI