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Difference between revisions of "Bilski's patent application text"

(In its original form, it was rejected by the USPTO, and all appeal courts right up to the US Supreme Court, but the authors have the option of changing the wording and continuing to pursue the)
m (moved Bilski's patent to Bilski's patent application text: application text)
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Revision as of 19:09, 11 July 2010

"The Bilski patent" is a patent application which was the object of in re Bilski in 2008 and Bilski v. Kappos in 2010. It has not (as of July 2010) been fully published. We do however have excerpts which got quoted during these court cases.

In its original form, it was rejected by the USPTO, and all appeal courts right up to the US Supreme Court, but the authors have the option of changing the wording and continuing to pursue the patent application.

Description

The US Supreme Court (which got to read the full application) summarised the patent in their Bilski v. Kappos ruling, as:

The key claims are claim 1, which describes a series of steps instructing how to hedge risk, and claim 4, which places the claim 1 concept into a simple mathematical formula. The remaining claims explain how claims 1 and 4 can be applied to allow energy suppliers and consumers to minimize the risks resulting from fluctuations in market demand.

The published excerpts

Claim 1

(a) initiating a series of transactions between said commodity provider and consumers of said commodity wherein said consumers purchase said commodity at a fixed rate based upon historical averages, said fixed rate corresponding to a risk position of said consumers;

(b) identifying market participants for said commodity having a counter-risk position to said consumers; and

(c) initiating a series of transactions between said commodity provider and said market participants at a second fixed rate such that said series of market participant transactions balances the risk position of said series of consumer transactions.

These are cited as "App. 19-20" - probably the page numbers of the application. This excerpt is introduced by the text "Claim 1 consists of the following steps", so it seems to be the complete text of Claim 1.

Claim 2

[t]he method of claim 1 wherein said commodity is energy and said market participants are transmission distributors.

Also cited as "App. 19-20".

Claim 4

The text of Claim 4 isn't in the Supreme Court's brief, but they mention what it's about:

The concept of hedging, described in claim 1 and reduced to a mathematical formula in claim 4

(Page 15; which is PDF page 19)

Claim 7

The court's document says:

claim 7 advises using well-known random analysis techniques to determine how much a seller will gain "from each transaction under each historical weather pattern."

Also cited as "App. 19-20".