United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
2007-1130
(Serial No. 08/883,892)
IN RE BERNARD L. BILSKI
and RAND A. WARSAW
Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Board of Patent Appeals
and Interferences.
RADER, Circuit Judge dissenting.
This court labors for page after page, paragraph after paragraph, explanation
after explanation to say what could have been said in a single sentence: “Because
Bilski claims merely an abstract idea, this court affirms the Board’s rejection.” If the only
problem of this vast judicial tome were its circuitous path, I would not dissent, but this
venture also disrupts settled and wise principles of law.
Much of the court’s difficulty lies in its reliance on dicta taken out of context from
numerous Supreme Court opinions dealing with the technology of the past. In other
words, as innovators seek the path to the next techno-revolution, this court ties our
patent system to dicta from an industrial age decades removed from the bleeding edge.
A direct reading of the Supreme Court’s principles and cases on patent eligibility would
yield the one-sentence resolution suggested above. Because this court, however, links
patent eligibility to the age of iron and steel at a time of subatomic particles and
terabytes, I must respectfully dissent.