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Supreme Court patent ruling is good news for cleantech business models

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The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Bilski v. Kappos is good news for clean energy innovators. The Bilski ruling ensures that the door to patenting business method inventions remains open, ending months of speculation that the Court might find such inventions categorically unpatentable. It helps ensure that our patent protection system stays robust, and this will spur innovation and attract the investment capital needed for research, development, and commercialization of clean energy technologies.

The Bilski patent application claimed a business method for buyers and sellers in the energy market to protect, or hedge, against changes in the demand for or price of energy.  The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected the invention as unpatentable, reasoning that it “is not implemented on a specific apparatus and merely manipulates an abstract idea.”

The rejection by the Patent Office was affirmed by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which held that the claimed invention failed the court’s newly-established “machine-or-transformation” test for determining the patentability of a method.  More specifically, the method was found unpatentable because it (1) was not tied to a particular machine or apparatus; and (2) did not transform a particular article into a different state or thing.  …


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