Décidemment un souffle de conservatisme balaie nos voisins du sud (voir l’article précédent)…
La United States Court of Appeal of the Federal Circuit a rendu une autre décision restrictive le même jour. En effet, dans In Re Stephen W. Comiskey, elle rends non brevetable une méthode d’affaire s’appuyant totalement sur un procédé mental. Selon la Cour: “the patent statute does not allow patents on particular systems that depend for their operation on human intelligence alone.”
Avec cette décision, la position des américains rejoint celle des canadiens sur ce sujet.
Le demandeur a avoué que les revendications 1 et 32 “do not require a machine, and these claims evidently do not describe a process of manufacture or a process for the alteration of a composition of matter”:
1. A method for mandatory arbitration resolution regarding one or more unilateral documents comprising the steps of:
enabling a person to enroll or register himself or herself and his or her one or more unilateral documents in a mandatory arbitration system;
providing arbitration language for insertion in the unilateral document wherein the arbitration language provides that any challenge to the unilateral document is to be presented to the mandatory arbitration system for binding arbitration;
enabling a complaintant to submit a request for arbitration resolution;
conducting arbitration resolution;
providing support to the arbitration; and
determining an award or a decision that is final and binding.