"On Monday, the inventors of a strategy for hedging risk in buying energy argued that they deserve to be considered for a patent, even though, as a lower court noted, their method does not involve a machine or the transformation of a physical thing.
Patent laws ought to be interpreted broadly "to accommodate unseen advances," said J. Michael Jakes, the attorney for Bernard L. Bilski and Rand A. Warsaw, who were gas company executives who started their own firm to commercialize their product."
If the Court moves further in this direction then such methods, procedures and practices are deemed patentable.
Now consider my friend the area of Comparative Clinical Effectiveness, the development of, if you will a set of methods, procedures, and practices, which are to be effected in certain disease states. Does this therefore mean that if the Court upholds the claims before it that such is patentable that therefore the CCE results are also patentable, and thus whoever obtains a patent on such claims can then also claim royalties, thus increasing the costs of health care. An interesting scenario to consider.
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