Still at risk regardless of Bilski's outcome

摘要

By the time you read this, it's a fair bet that we will all be busy studying the US Supreme Court's much-anticipated Bilski decision.1 Patent lawyers, judges, litigants and scholars will be trying their best to understand, in light of whatever that decision says, when an invention that includes an algorithm (using the term in its broadest sense) that is expressed as a process step, or series of process steps, constitutes "statutory" patentable subject matter under the Patent Act, 35 United States Code, Section 101. It seems highly doubtful, in this author's opinion, that the Supreme Court's answer to the question will be "never"; instead, we will be left with precedential fodder for judicial interpretation for years to come.