Clinic Posts Bilski Amicus Brief Summaries

Under the leadership of Intellectual Property Amicus Brief Clinic Director J. Jeffrey Hawley and IP professors Ann M. McCrackin and Thomas G Field Jr.,  students Alex Chan, David Hardoon, and Christine Labbate worked throughout the summer, drafting an amicus brief on the merits in Bilski v Doll, (now Bilski v Kappos) scheduled to be argued in front of the Supreme Court of the United States on Monday, November 9.

The brief was the second filed on Bilski by the Clinic.  Its brief in support of certiorari was filed last spring and was the product of work by Clinic members Jason Condrasky, David Hardoon, Haimei Jiang, Yuliya Kleynbok, Christine Labbate, Ramani V. Marakani and Michael Whalen.

The case is the most important involving Intellectual Property in many years, raising the question of whether business methods are patentable. The Pierce Law IP Amicus Clinic position supports neither party, nor does it support the Machine or Transformation test set up by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.  It does support the Useful, Concrete and Tangible (UCT) test and makes two arguments: 1) Broad interpretation of patentable subject matter has served the country well.  UCT has worked well for ten years and the Supreme Court has had no difficulty dealing with business method claims. 2) Congress has had numerous opportunities to change UCT and has not.  There is nothing in any of the pending bills which would change the patentable subject matter standards for method claims.

This semester's IP Amicus Brief Clinic, comprised of Alex Chan, Dylan Nelson, Gordon Daniell, Jonathan Whitcomb, Kristal Wicks, Richard Amster, Saurabh Vishnubhakat, and Stephanie Hernandez-Siman, has recently completed a summary of all 66 briefs submitted in Bilski v Kappas. Of them, Pierce Law and William Mitchell College of Law are the only law schools represented; they are in company with the likes of the iBM,  Novartis Corporation, the IPO, Prometheus Labs, AIPLA and Knowledge Ecology International (KEI).

Professor McCrackin, "Counsel of Record" on the brief and Director of Pierce Law's Patent Prosecution Program, goes to Washington, D.C., Monday in hopes of attending the Supreme Court hearings.  Professor Hawley discusses Bilski in a video clip available online.

read the >>Franklin Pierce Law Center Amicus Brief on Merits of Bilski
Bilski Amicus Brief Summary  (PDF also available)