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Contents : No. 08-964 In the Supreme Court of the United States BERNARD L. BILSKI and RAND A. WARSAW Petitioners v. JOHN J. DOLL Respondent. On Writ of Certiorari to The United States Court of Appeals For the Federal Circuit BRIEF OF AMICUS CURIAE YAHOO! INC. IN SUPPORT OF NEITHER PARTY DUANE R. VALZ Yahoo! Inc. 701 First Avenue Sunnyvale CA 94089 (408) 349 3300 CHRISTOPHER J. WRIGHT * TIMOTHY J. SIMEONE JOSEPH C. CAVENDER Wiltshire & Grannis LLP Washington D.C. 20036 (202) 730 1300 *Counsel of Record AUGUST 2009 i QUESTION PRESENTED Section 101 of the Patent Act makes "any new and useful process machine manufacture or composition of matter or any new and useful improvement thereof" patent-eligible. The question presented is whether the Federal Circuit erred by holding that the "definitive test" for determining whether a process claim is patent-eligible is whether "it is tied to a particular machine or apparatus" or "it transforms a particular article into a different state or thing." ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page QUESTION PRESENTED...........................................i TABLE OF AUTHORITIES.......................................iv INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE.............................1 INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT ..........................................................1 ARGUMENT ...............................................................5 I. THE FEDERAL CIRCUIT'S MACHINE-ORTRANSFORMATION TEST IS BOTH CONCEPTUALLY AND PRACTICALLY FLAWED ...............................................................5 A. The Machine-or-Transformation Test Is Conceptually Flawed Because a PatentEligibility Standard Focusing Solely on Physicality Requirements Is Ill-Adapted to Today's Technologies..................................5 B. The Machine-or-Transformation Test Is Difficult to Apply Incompletely Captures the Policies Underlying the Patent Act and Threatens to Destabilize Previously Settled Areas of Law ......................................9 II. THE PLAIN LANGUAGE OF THE PATENT ACT IS BROAD AND THIS COURT HAS PROPERLY FOUND FEW REASONS SUFFICIENT TO JUSTIFY EXEMPTIONS FROM THAT LANGUAGE ................................17 A. This Court's Cases Have Found the Scope of the Patent Act to be Broad but Not Unlimited......................................................18 iii B. This Court has Identified Two Fundamental Reasons for Excluding Subject Matter from the Scope of Section 101....................................................19 C. The Court's Modern Cases Addressing Processes Reflect the Limitations Discussed Above ...........................................21 D. Not All "Algorithms" Fall Within Le Roy's Limitations on Patentability........................24 III. THIS COURT SHOULD RECOGNIZE PRINCIPLES FOR PATENTABILITY CONSISTENT WITH THE LANGUAGE AND PURPOSES OF 101 .................................26 A. The Federal Circuit's Recent Tests for Patentability have Become Unmoored from the Language and Policies of the Act..26 B. Analysis of Patentability Consistent with the Fundamental Purposes of the Act Should Consider Both the Nature of the Claimed Process and the End Result ..........29 IV. BILSKI'S INVENTION IS NOT PATENTELIGIBLE ...........................................................34 CONCLUSION ..........................................................36 iv TABLE OF AUTHORITIES CASES: Page In re Alappat 33 F.3d 1526 (Fed. Cir. 1994)..3 27 28 Arrhythmia Research Tech. Inc. v. Corazonix Corp. 958 F.2d 1053 (Fed. Cir. 1992) ...........26 28 AT&T Corp. v. Excel Communications Inc. 172 F.3d 1352 (Fed. Cir. 1999) ............................27 Ex Parte Atkin No. 2008-4352 2009 Pat. App. LEXIS 1 (BPAI Jan. 30 2009).......................14 15 In re Beauregard 53 F.3d 1583 (Fed. Cir. 1995) ....................................................13 In re Bilski 545 F.3d 945 (Fed. Cir. 2008) ....... passim Ex parte Bo Li No. 2008-1213 2008 Pat. App. LEXIS 27 (BPAI Nov. 6 2008) ............................15 Bonito Boats Inc. v. Thunder Craft Boats 489 U.S. 141 (1989)..............................................21 Cochrane v. Deener 94 U.S. 780 (1877)....................34 In re Comiskey 554 F.3d 967 (Fed. Cir. 2009) ...10 11 In re Comiskey 2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 400 (Fed. Cir. 2009) ..............................................11 13 Corning v. Burden 56 U.S. 252 (1853).....................29 Cybersource Corp. v. Retail Decisions Inc. 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 26056 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 26 2009)..................................15 16 17 Diamond v. Chakrabarty 447 U.S. 303 (1980) ........20 Diamond v. Diehr 450 U.S. 175 (1981)............ passim In re Ferguson 558 F.3d 1359 (Fed. Cir. 2009) ...9 10

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