Maryland Intellectual Property Law Blog : Maryland Intellectual Property Lawyer & Attorney : Brian Wm. Higgins : Serving Baltimore, Columbia, Frederick

• In Re Bilski (Fed. Cir.; October 30, 2008)

     In In Re Bilski, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, DC, sitting en banc, considered the issue of whether certain so-called business methods and other “processes” are eligible for patent protection. Less than a day after the court’s eagerly-anticipated decision, general and legal news media outlets proclaimed the end of patent protection for software-related business methods, and shortly thereafter business associations called for patent reform legislation to expand the Patent Act’s scope to reestablish protections for software inventions. It may take days and perhaps weeks for the debate to subside over exactly how far the Bilski court swung the pendulum away from the pro-patent apex. What is clear, however, is that Bilski did not do away with business methods and general software process patents entirely, although it did tighten the patent eligibility standard for inventions involving processes.

     Section 101 of the Patent Act identifies four categories of patent-eligible subject matter: processes, machines, manufactures, and compositions of matter. The patent claims at issue in Bilski involved a computerized process, specifically a method of hedging risk in the field of commodities trading. 

     Drawing extensively from the Supreme Court’s holding and analysis in Diamond v. Diehr, 450 U.S. 175 (1981) and Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U.S. 63, 67 (1972), the Federal Circuit recognized that “the question before us then is whether Applicants' claim recites a fundamental principle [i.e., "laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas"] and, if so, whether it would pre-empt substantially all uses of that fundamental principle if allowed.” The definitive test, the court said, involves a determination of whether a process claim is tailored narrowly enough to encompass only a particular application of a fundamental principle rather than to pre-empt the principle itself.

     A claimed process, the court said, is patent-eligible under § 101 if:  (1) it is tied to a particular machine or apparatus, or (2) it transforms a particular article into a different state or thing.

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Copyright

• On October 13, 2008, President Bush signed into law P.L. 110-403, the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008 (also known as the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act or PRO-IP Act). The law creates a cabinet-level position entitled “Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator”, a.k.a. the Copyright Czar, who will “report directly to the president and Congress regarding domestic international intellectual property enforcement programs.” The Czar will have the responsibility of implementing a nationwide plan to combat piracy (sources: Wired; Counterfeit Chic; GovTracks; Copyright Office)
   
• For more information about the new enforcement law, visit these previous posts:  link1, link2, link3
   
• Minnesota U.S. District Court Judge Michael Davis overturned a $222,000 judgment against Jammie Thomas, mother of three, after finding he erroneously instructed jurors prior to deliberations that they could find copyright infringement on the basis that Thomas made copyrighted music recordings available on a popular file sharing network.  Davis’ decision means that the Recording Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) copyright infringement litigation campaign, now totaling over 30,000 lawsuits, has never been successful at trial (source: Wired)
   
• The RIAA reportedly labeled a Texas Tech college student "vexatious" after she refused to pay music record labels $7,400 for allegedly infringing 37 songs on a popular file sharing network (source: Wired)
   
• The Copyright Office announced a new rulemaking under the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) concerning the authority of the Librarian of Congress to exempt certain classes of works from the prohibition against circumvention of technological measures that control access to copyrighted works (17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1)(c)). The purpose of the rulemaking is to determine whether there are particular classes of works as to which users are, or are likely to be, adversely affected in their ability to make noninfringing uses due to the prohibition on circumvention (source: Copyright Office)

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