Final Bilski Briefs Filed - Microsoft, Google, FFII, ABA, etc.

"Microsoft asks that the lower court's rejection of Bilski's patent be upheld, but they also believe the "machine-or-transformation" test the lower court set forth should be disapproved. Instead, they think the standard should be "new and useful":

"While electronic computers have become ubiquitous and almost infinitely varied in form and function, virtually all of them rely for their operation on the same physical activity--the routing and rerouting of electrical signals by means of on-off switches such as transistors. A "hardware" device, such as a laptop computer, contains millions of tiny transistor switches; "software" is the set of instructions that determines the configuration of and directs electrical signals through these switches so that the device will do something useful. While both hardware and software have become increasingly complex, the underlying activity--the sequential operation of switches--has been the basis of patent-eligible processes since at least the Industrial Revolution."

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