Brief Amici Curiae of 20 Law and Business Professors in Support of Neither Party in Bilski v. Doll [post]

Mark Lemley
2016 unpublished
The patent statutes were wisely drafted with an expansive vision ofpatentable subject matter. Efforts to graft judicially created limitationsonto that expansive scope in the past have proven fruitless and indeedcounterproductive. In deciding Bilski v. Doll, the Supreme Court should notimpose a requirement that patentable inventions require a machine or thephysical transformation of some material. It should instead maintain therule that patents are available for "anything under the sun made by
more » ... n,"including discoveries of ideas, laws of nature, or natural phenomena, solong as they are implemented in a practical application. In short, the testshould be as it has been: where an idea is claimed as applied, it iseligible for patentability, but if it is claimed merely in the abstract itis not.
doi:10.31235/osf.io/2u5zs fatcat:bv5kon7l3fe6rogwytkkv334ua