Today was the deadline for amicus (“friend of the court”) briefs in support of the Obama Administration’s position in the Bilski case. On behalf of the U.S. Patent Office, they argue that patentable processes must be limited to technological processes, which include but are not limited to those that are tied to a particular machine or that transform matter into a different state or thing. Because the Bilski application does neither, they argue it is unpatentable.
Prof. Pamela Samuelson and I filed a brief in support of this position on behalf of the Kauffman Foundation, EFF, Public Knowledge, MIT business professor Eric von Hippel, and several well-known technology entrepreneurs. The brief urges the court to affirm the rejection of the Bilski application for three reasons: (1) the history and structure of § 101 limit the construction of “process” to technological processes (which we define), (2) allowing patents on non-technological processes such as those in the business and service industries is unnecessary and harmful to innovation, and (3) removing the long-standing technological limit on § 101 processes would undermine the institutional competence of both the PTO and the federal courts to protect innovation.
EFF has done a blog post on the brief and the case here.
Briefs in support of Bilski’s position can be found here.
I will try to post links to various briefs as they come in.
To start, you can find the Redhat brief here.
UPDATE: Patently-O has most of the amici supporting the USPTO here.