Patent Law

From an article by Anya Litvak in the October 30, 2009 print edition of the Pittsburgh Business Times:

On Nov. 9, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide if a Pittsburgh company?s idea to protect consumers against energy price and volume swings caused by bad weather is an abstract concept or a patentable business method.

Its implications may decide the fate of patents covering everything from diagnostic medical tests to the tax advice you get from your accountant.

Rand Warsaw, president of WeatherWise USA on the South Side, will be in the courtroom as his decade-long battle for a business methods patent moves into the final leg.

Warsaw and his then-business partner, Bernie Bilski, applied for such a patent in the mid-1990s to protect their method of hedging against price and volume changes. Their plan, called a guaranteed bill, was to patent the idea of using fixed price contracts as a way to mitigate the risk that bad weather can pose to prices and the demand for energy. The contracts served to balance the risk to suppliers and consumers of energy.

Full article is available to subscribers here.  See related article titled, "Accountants, consumer groups push for passage of legislation to eliminate tax strategy patents" here.