Supreme Court Has Held That This Is Not The Only Test
The Supreme Court has held that the machine-or-transformation test is not the sole test for the patent-eligibility of processes. The certiorari petition in Bilski challenges that proposition. In Gottschalk v. Benson, the Court expressly reversed the Federal Circuit on this point, stating:
It is argued that a process patent must either be tied to a particular machine or apparatus or must operate to change articles or materials to a “different state or thing.” We do not hold that no process patent could ever qualify if it did not meet the requirements of our prior precedents.
The government had made an argument in its brief in Benson that the Court should so hold and that it was impossible to rationalize the case law any other way. The Court, in its ruling, refused or failed to agree with that argument.
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