Nightly Business Report
http://www.pbs.org/nbr/site/onair/transcripts/nbr_transcripts_091109/
Teen Entrepreneurs
PAMELA SAMUELSON, LAW PROFESSOR, U.C. BERKELEY: It’s just difficult to do searches and impose huge amount of cost on society if everybody who decides that they are going to engage in a hedging strategy has to go check the patent office records to see whether or not they have to clear rights.
GERSH: Law professor Kevin Collins says the court today showed it clearly wants to rein in the patent system, but isn’t sure how hard to pull.
KEVIN COLLINS, LAW PROFESSOR, INDIANA UNIVERSITY: Either the case could go from a relatively narrow exclusion that affects only business method patents to quite a broad exclusion from patentability that could affect the patentability of a number of software and biotech inventions.
GERSH: Which is why companies like Yahoo! and Microsoft filed briefs in this case and are watching it closely. A decision is expected next spring. Darren Gersh, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Washington.