A recent judgment was pronounced by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (pronounced on October 30, 2008) relating to Process/Method Claims. The case is called ‘In Re Bernard L. Bilski and Rand A. Warsaw’.

In this decision the Court has discarded the “concrete, useful and tangible result” test that was being followed by USPTO and the US Courts for determining the patentability of process claims.

The Court has laid down that the right test to determine the patentability of process claims is the machine or transformation test. This test requires a process claim to be tied to a machine or involve transformation of an article from one form to another to be patentable. Software per se are not patentable, however, if the software is tied to a machine or involves the transformation of an article from one form to another, it will be patentable.

The process claim should have a structural limitation or should change a physical tangible object from one form to another.