The U.S. Supreme Court is going to hear the Bilski business methods patent appeal in December. A district court and then the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit en banc threw out the so-called State Street test for patentability when they said that a method of hedging risks in commodities trading could not be patented and reiterated the old machine-or-transformation test as a patent threshold. The case has implication for the software business and so has been carefully watched.

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