Abstract :
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its ruling in In re Bilski, 9-3, on 30 October 2008. The issues in the case were discussed in the July/August and September/October 2008 issues of IEEE Micro "What Kinds of Computer-Software-Related Advances (if Any) Are Eligible for Patents?" The court\´s ruling may limit the availability of patents on business methods and call into question the validity of the many business-method patents that the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has issued in the last decade.
