Preempting the US Supreme Court’s review of patentable inventions (re Bilski), the USPTO deputy commissioner has issued some nifty guidelines and rather inane flow-charts demonstrating to those requiring intellectual examination what a machine is or what a transformation is. See Dennis Crouch’s Patently-O:
http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2009/08/interim-guidelines-on-statutory-subject-matter.html
From my reading of the guidelines, I would say that business methods and gene sequences are out in the interim. Note, this is interpretation only. There are no clear statements to that effect. It does seem that anything new under the sun, is no longer patentable; merely new materials, new devices and systems and new methods of transforming matter.
I am not sure what the Supreme Court will do, but I assume that they are hearing the case as they intend to do something. It is, however, not clear why the USPTO has decided to publish interim guidelines.
For a great piece of satire on the topic by Professor Jeremy Phillips, see the IPKAT:
http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2009/08/another-new-uspto-test.html
November 9, 2009 at 6:57 pm |
[...] Court hearing re Bilski, the USPTO has issued guidelines on patentable subject matter. See http://blog.ipfactor.co.il/2009/08/27/uspto-issues-guidelines-about-patentable-subject-matter/ which themselves seem to indicate that genes are no longer patentable. Leave a [...]