And business methods patents expand in scope again
Monday, October 17th, 2005Well, this sucks.
Business method patents used to have requirement that they be tied to something physical, or at least, an apparatus . This was part of the test for whether they “produce a useful, concrete, tangible result” without being a “law of nature, physical phenomenon or abstract idea.”.
However, apparently, the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences has trouble understanding what concrete means, and what a law of nature is, and thus issued an opinion saying the PTO can’t reject patents simply because they have no apparatus of any kind (technological or otherwise) that performs them.
See Patently-O for more details.
The gist of this is that business method patents will now be much easier to get and maintain.
There is always hope the PTO solicitor will appeal this to the Federal Circuit, but with the way the Federal Circuit is these days, i’d imagine it wouldn’t really help.