Bilski applied: The start of the ripple effect
As reported in our April 2008 IP Update, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued an en banc Order in the spring of 2008 that required the full Court to rehear the appeal of In Re Bernard L. Bilski and Rand A. Warsaw.
In U.S. Court of Appeals practice, an en banc rehearing is typically granted only where a case is considered unusually important. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit had expressly raised the possibility of overruling its own prior decisions on business-method patents, namely State Street Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Financial Group Inc., 149 F.3d 1368 (Fed. Cir. 1998) and AT&T Corp. v. Excel Communications, Inc., 172 F.3d 1352 (Fed. Cir. 1999).
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