Representative Cases

Represented our client, Accenture, and Pitney Bowes Inc. as amici curiae on petition for certiorari, challenging the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's test for patent-eligible subject matter and its "machine-or-transformation" test and arguing that Supreme Court precedent counsels a flexible approach to application of 35 U.S.C. ? 101 for process patent eligibility. The Supreme Court will now consider whether business method patent protection should be expanded.

The Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on June 1, 2009. The Court will hear the case in October of 2009 and determine whether the Federal Circuit's "machine-or-transformation" test unnecessarily ties the process category of section 101 to one of the other categories of that section, such as the "machine'" or "manufacture" category and improperly anchors the standard in the 20th Century. Once a ruling on this case is made, inventors and corporations will have a more definite idea of what business methods and other cutting-edge processes are patentable and may be able to better protect existing and future patent rights.