Dans la cause In Re Bilski, la United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit a affirmé qu’une « method for managing the consumption risk costs of a commodity sold by a commodity provider » ne constituait pas de la matière brevetable parce qu’elle ne rencontrait pas les critères suivants:
- « is tied to a particular machine or apparatus, »;
- « transforms a particular article into a different state or thing. »
Cette décision clarifie les éléments requis pour déterminer si une revendication de méthode constitue un « procédé » brevetable sous 35 U.S.C. §101.
La revendication 1 se lit comme suit:
A method for managing the consumption risk costs of a commodity sold by a commodity provider at a fixed price comprising the steps of:
(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 consumer;
(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