The Bilski Case

Here’s a blog post from The Wall Street Journal on the recent Bilski Case, essentially outmoding the State Street Bank Case of 1998, which set a legal precedent for the patentability of business methods. This could carry considerable repercussions for software companies, including Apple (see here).

This could have some fascinating implications for competition and innovation: on one hand it could create greater competition, by allowing more companies to use each other’s practices, maybe even creating incentives for competing companies to collaborate (which itself raises issues of oligopolies); on the other hand, it could stifle innovation by offering no immediate incentive to role out new methods. Companies such as Apple might actually be doing themselves a disservice by filing these patents, if they truly cannot be protected any longer.

Stay tuned.