Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2012
Publication
Campbell Law Review
Volume
34
Abbreviation
Campbell L. Rev.
First Page
663
Abstract
The Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Bilski v. Kappos appears to have provided inadequate guidance to the courts and the Patent Office regarding the scope of the abstract-ideas exclusion from patentable subject matter. Federal Circuit Chief Judge Randall R. Rader, however, appears to have found in that decision a clear vindication of his own view that the machine-or-transformation test is incorrectly grounded in “the age of iron and steel at a time of subatomic particles and terabytes,” and thus fails, for example, to accommodate advances in “software [that] transform[] our lives without physical anchors.” Chief Judge Rader has subsequently authored a series of opinions identifying the “marketplace” as an operational context in which a claimed invention is not likely to be unpatentably abstract. This Article argues that this reliance on the “marketplace” is untenable and should form no part of patent-eligibility doctrine.