US: Précision de la Cour sur la brevetabilité des “Méthodes d’affaires”

Dans la cause In Re Bilski, la United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit a affirmé qu’une “method for managing the consumption risk costs of a commodity sold by a commodity provider” ne constituait pas de la matière brevetable parce qu’elle ne rencontrait pas les critères suivants:

  1. “is tied to a particular machine or apparatus,”;
  2. “transforms a particular article into a different state or thing.”

Cette décision clarifie les éléments requis pour déterminer si une revendication de méthode constitue un “procédé” brevetable sous 35 U.S.C. §101.

La revendication 1 se lit comme suit:

A method for managing the consumption risk costs of a commodity sold by a commodity provider at a fixed price comprising the steps of:

(a) initiating a series of transactions between said commodity provider and consumers of said commodity wherein said consumers purchase said commodity at a fixed rate based upon historical averages, said fixed rate corresponding to a risk position of said consumer;

(b) identifying market participants for said commodity having a counter-risk position to said consumers; and

(c) initiating a series of transactions between said commodity provider and said market participants at a second fixed rate such that said series of market participant transactions balances the risk position of said series of consumer transactions

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