The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit1 recently revised its fundamental jurisprudence regarding the patentability of certain method or process patents. Most notably, the opinion in In re Bilski, No. 2007-1130 (2008), circumscribes the patentability of a broad category of business and other algorithmic methods. The Court’s opinion requires that any patent claiming a process must now include: (i) a physical apparatus for carrying it out or (ii) a transformation of a physical object or electronic representation of an object into another state or a different object. Practically, this will result in a limitation of allowable patent claims directed at processes which are not mechanically implemented.
