Parker v. Flook
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| Parker v. Flook | ||||||||||||||
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| Argued April 25, 1978 Decided June 22, 1978 |
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| Holding | ||||||||||||||
| A mathematical algorithm is not patentable if its application is not novel. | ||||||||||||||
| Court membership | ||||||||||||||
| Chief Justice: Warren E. Burger Associate Justices: William J. Brennan, Jr., Potter Stewart, Byron White, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., William Rehnquist, John Paul Stevens |
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| Case opinions | ||||||||||||||
| Majority by: Stevens Joined by: Brennan, White, Marshall, Blackmun, Powell Dissent by: Stewart Joined by: Burger, Rehnquist |
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| Laws applied | ||||||||||||||
| 101 of the Patent Act | ||||||||||||||
Parker v. Flook, was a United States Supreme Court case that ruled that a mathematical algorithm isn't patentable if its application itself isn't novel. The case was argued on April 25, 1978 and was decided June 22, 1978.
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[edit] Prior history
The case revolves around a patent for a "Method for Updating Alarm Limits". These limits are numbers between which a catalytic converter is operating normally. When the values leave this range an alarm is sounded. Flook's method was identical to previous systems except for the mathematical algorithm. In Gottschalk v. Benson, the court ruled that the discovery of a new formula is not patentable. This case differed because it included an application for the formula. Since the only difference between the patented system and the prior art is the mathematics the patent is effectively just on the equation. The patent examiner rejected the patent along that line of reasoning. When the decision was appealed, the Board of Appeals of the Patent and Trademark Office sustained the examiner's rejection. Next, the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals reversed the lower court's decision saying that the patent only claimed the right to the equation in the context of the catalytic chemical conversion of hydrocarbons. Finally, the Acting Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks filed a petition for a writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court.
[edit] The case
The law which is applicable to this case is section 101 of the Patent Act. If Flook's patent can meet the definition of a "process" under that law then it is patentable. The opinion decided instead that the patent's mathematics was instead a "principle" or a "law of nature" and thus is not patentable (see Le Roy v. Tatham). In the end, the court ruled that the patent as a whole was not patentable because the process which involves the mathematical principle is not novel. The court did not agree with Flook's assertion that the existence of a "post-solution activity" made the formula patentable. The majority opinion said of this,
"A competent draftsman could attach some form of post-solution activity to almost any mathematical formula; the Pythagorean theorem would not have been patentable, or partially patentable, because a patent application contained a final step indicating that the formula, when solved, could be usefully applied to existing surveying techniques."
The court moderated that assertion by agreeing that not all patents involving formulas are unpatentable by saying, "Yet it is equally clear that a process is not unpatentable simply because it contains a law of nature or a mathematical algorithm."
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ Section 101 says, "Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title." Section 100(b) gives the definition for process, "The term ‘process’ means process, art or method, and includes a new use of a known process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter, or material." [2]
