Softwarepatenten.be

Overview:

The content management system software most widely known as the ‘CMS’ is designed to create, organize, store, publish, process, display and empower your online endeavors. It has been globally realized & accepted that CMS is a natural, furthermore powerful extension of the blog concept and decided CMSs really require a separate site to explore and reveal these emerging and dynamic programs. There are literally hundreds of CMS software programs to choose from (500 in Europe alone). In this CMS software review, we’ve narrowed the field down to some of the most-used Open Source software based on the PHP language and using a MySQL database, with the exception of Expression Engine which is proprietary. Our selections represent only a small cross-section of what’s out there ranging Posterous.com, Wordpress, Typepad, Drupal, Joomla and Vignette.

For everyone working and living online, the CMS is your next best friend. When it comes to life online, we all use CMSs in one way or another: blogging, creating websites, maintaining websites, selling products online (e-commerce), Product promotion & Marketing and many more. The redefined horizon if CMS in this 21st Century begins from creation of a system that separates creation of design & content, then work together to publish the elements. A web CMS is designed to simplify the publication of Web content to Web sites, in particular allowing content creators to submit content without requiring technical knowledge of HTML or file uploads. News articles, blogs, operators’ manuals, technical manuals, sales guides, and marketing brochures are just a sampling of the kind of content managed by a CMS. The content managed may include computer files, image media, audio files, video files, electronic documents, and Web content.

The system we chose consistently finishes at the top of the side-by-side comparisons, in many cases the gap between these and the rest is significant. Begin here by narrowing the field based on your most-needed features. From there, move to the price you need to pay to get it up and working. This will help you determine what the best CMS is for your specific project and skill set. Lets us start from the beginning

1) posterous.com:

It is a blogging site. Posterous.com is the best for startups in blogging. The best part of this is you need not register, just Send your text, photo, video or link in an e-mail to post @ posterous . com and your blog is created and updated for you. Well you can make changes to the site unless you are coding wizard. There is no cost to use it.

2) WordPress:

If you need A blog, homepage, some videos and photos the next choice is Wordpress. This is best for Graphic designers, Game Designers/Creators and other creative people who want a different site which is easy to use. Wordpress has countless plug-ins and themes (premium and free). The most features for the least work. This site is not as easy to customize. To use Wordpress is Free, but you need someone to design it. Professionals start at $1,000; ready-made themes at $20, plus installation.

3) Typepad:

This is the best site for professionals who need A blog, homepage, some videos and photos. The best ones who make the most of this site are Journalists, bloggers and professionals who like to keep it simple (not too many widgets). The challenge in using Typepad is the integration to the Moveable Type into your existing site. It has less in-house and third-party themes compared to Wordpress. When it comes to price to use Typepad it is $8.95 per month for one to three blogs with other options available too.

4) Drupal CMS:

Drupal is a blog, home-page, videos, photos, e-commerce, ad server and community features. This is best for someone who needs customized content and it is not difficult to learn how to use it. Drupal can do just about anything you wish to get done from your site. The advantage here is a huge user community which is always ready to share tips to help your geek along. To use Drupal is Free as its open source, meaning that an army of developers works on plug-ins. You just need to know how to install them.

5) Joomla:

Joomla in itself is a bunch of many things together like a blog, home-page, videos, photos, e-commerce, ad server and community features. Joomla is best for businesses that need more customization than what Wordpress offers. The learning curve is less than Drupal's, but just a little less. But this is really not for someone who's looking for real customization. Its user/developer community isn't as substantial as Drupal's or WordPress's, making some essential plug-ins harder to find. To use its Free but Like Drupal, Joomla is probably too complex to develop, design and maintain yourself.

6) Vignette:

Vignette is the best for all of your needs but as you know everything comes with a price, using vignette will cost you a big chunk. This is best for big businesses that need a major, fully customizable website viz think managing reservations on a hotel site or paying bills online. This system is complex to use so you may need assistance in getting things up & running. Using Vignette may cost you Upward of $250,000.

What is important in a CMS? Built-in Applications

Built-in applications are features and functionality that are standards with each CMS. Blog capabilities are standard across the board but only Wordpress.org and Movable Type offer a built-in photo gallery. It is seen in the side-by-side matrix, that many of these systems offer free add-ons (also called plugins) or the capability to write and install your own plugin. Chat, classifieds, contact management, data entry, database reports, forums, document management, events calendar, FAQ management, guest book, link management, mail form, dashboard, newsletter, search engine, site map, product management, syndicated content, wiki capabilities and front-end web services are the other potential criteria reviewed for built-in features.

Security

Security is a no-brainer on the web. If you want a CMS your employees/customers/clients can trust you could need a whole variety of security measures, many of which are reviewed here. Audit trail, Captcha, content approval, email verification, several different types of authentication protocols, login history, sandbox, session management, SSL compatibility (logins and pages) and versioning are all listed here on our side-by-side matrix. Some of these content management system software programs build these in – others offer them for a cost or for free.
Management

These management features describe the inherent or pluggable way the systems organize, schedule and deploy the information contained within the system. Advertising management, asset management, clipboard, content scheduling, content staging, inline administration, package deployment, sub sites/roots, themes/skins, trash, web stats, web-based template manager, web-based translation manager and workflow engine are all standards by which this category is measured.

Performance

Performance of a potential content management system is a vital, though largely behind-the-scenes component. This criteria rates the advanced caching, database replication, load balancing, page caching and static content export capabilities of these systems. Some include these as built-in architecture; others offer them free or with a cost.

E-Commerce

Ecommerce is a largely optional feature set in this particular type of content management systems (which are more focused on the publishing abilities). But if you are looking at something with advanced publishing capabilities as well as expandable commerce components you can check if your potential CMS offers them. Affiliate tracking, inventory management, pluggable payments, pluggable shipping, pluggable tax, point of sale, shopping cart, subscriptions and wish lists are all important e-commerce functionalities that could be added on to the web content management systems.

Ease of Use

when you’re choosing a CMS, whether you are a blogger, developer or designer ease of use is probably the most desirable lookout, later would be the publishing and performance features. For a CMS, ease of use includes drag-n-drop content, email to forum, friendly URLs, image resizing, macro language, mass upload, prototyping, server page language, spell check, style wizard, subscriptions, template language, UI levels, undo and WYSIWYG editor. If you find you don’t exactly comprehend what server page language means, we’ve also defined that and chances are you will recognize the functionality once explained.

Support

Support is another vital component of Open Source content management system software. Since the core and component code is updated and changed often, user forums, skeletons and comprehensible online documentation has to be readily available as an ongoing guidebook. Commercial manuals, commercial support, commercial training, developer community, online help, pluggable API, professional hosting, professional services, public forum, mailing list, smoke tests, third-party developers and users conference are all standard aspects of support for these complex and powerful programs.
Content creation, content management, publishing and presentation are the four main categories of CMS functionality. Here are just a few benefits your online business can gain by implementing a CMS:

• Reduce costs of site maintenance
• Streamline authoring process
• Increase security
• Greater consistency
• Reduce information duplication
• Improve site navigation
• Quick turnaround time for new pages and changes to your site
• Increase site flexibility
• Support remote authoring
• Increase growth capacity

This blog is a starting point to discovering the CMS of your dreams and how to make it work for you. Whatever system you choose, there are many online resources to aid you in setup and use. You may also be offered a demonstration product so you can get a feel actually using the system before you commit all your content and assets.

We at Rigel Networks are an expertise at building CMSs, what we focus on the most is the usability turning to business profitability of our clients. We take pride in presenting a series of appreciations by all of our clients who have been benefited by our services and solutions. To know furthermore about our capabilities in the Open Source Technology kindly follow this link. Rigel Networks Open Source Technology Expertise.

The Open XML process is a great case study why Wikipedia is not always reliable, when money comes into play. Even before the heated phases of the Open XML discussions at ISO a scandal rocked the Wikipedia scene. Rick Jelliffe disclosed in his blog that he was offered money by a company to edit the Open XML article. At that is exactly how this article looks until this very day, a honeypot for young wikipedians who want to watch the dirty tricks.

Throughout the controversial phases the editing process demonstrated a clear bias of professional editors towards a certain corporate agenda and pushed the Open XML article towards a "shadow article" as a target, close to advertisement. So regardless what was changed by the 'ordinary guys' would be reversed, step by step.

Now the Open XML controversy is gone. We have to understand that a lot of money is at stake. Consider that the Council could save 50 Million Pounds by shifting to ODF and open source. And that is just a tiny example.

"The following is a transcript of a talk given in New Zealand, 2010. Andrew Tridgell discusses why reading patents is usually a good idea, how to read a patent, and how to work through it with a lawyer to build a solid defence. For the free software community, Tridgell also suggests how cooperation could help scare off patent holders. "

Source: http://news.swpat.org/2010/03/transcript-tridgell-patents/

The EU-Court of Justice, General Advocate, finally releases its opinion on the EU-Councils proposal for a new patent court system in EU.
As we heard in rumors earlier, the court and its general advocate finds patent granting too isolated from EU-law and oversight. Hear-Hear!

 I'd say its a win for FFII:s fight against an independent EPO-patent granting machine. IPjur and ipkitten comments.

Now we have to watch how the EU-Council will try to circumvent this statement. They apparently kept this document from the public since May.

Ugly EU-Council politics is trying to give the EPO immunity in patent granting on abstract matters. That would be a big disaster for EU-innovation.

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The Open XML slugfest at ISO is over, governments around the world select ODF for document interoperability. But the proprietary binary office productivity file formats are still widespread. Former Open XML evangelist Doug Mahugh announces a "Binary Format Plugfest" for October 18/19:

Microsoft subject matter experts from both the support organization and the product team will be onsite to answer questions about the Binary File Formats. This Plugfest will be a great opportunity for you to test your [Binary File Format]BFF implementations and receive immediate feedback and assistance from Microsoft.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dmahugh/archive/2010/08/18/binary-file-format-plugfest.aspx

The U.S. Supreme Court takes the easy way out of allowing abstract patent by ruling more specific than foreseeing.
I would have liked to see a clarification on whats abstract and not patentable. What we got was a loose no-no for business methods, whatever that might mean. On the other hand, business methods needs a boundary - and that might just be to the extent of what is an abstract (processes): Information and calculation.

Nothing seems to have been resolved though. When will lawyers ever understand the difference between complex (inventive step) and abstract (subject matter) - perhaps they need to study software development first? The well placed machine+transformation test was not accepted as well as the former business method enabler case "State Street". Its up to The Congress to clean or possibly corrupt the patent system further. FFII.org has a PR out:  Narrow Bilski ruling leaves all options open for the future

Some discussions:

• Groklaw:The Bilski Decision Is In: Buh-Bye [Most] Business Methods Patents - As text - Updated
  http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20081030150903555
• Techdirt: Supreme Court Rules Narrowly In Bilski; Business Method & Software Patents Survive
  http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100628/0759029989.shtml
  Techdirt x2: Second Thoughts On Bilski: Could Another Case Get A Direct Ruling On Business Method Patentability?
  http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100628/0945579990.shtml
• Dr Dobbs:
  http://www.drdobbs.com/blog/archives/2010/06/software_patent.html
• NetworkWorld:
  http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/63009
• IEEE commentary (IEEE has a weakness for software patents)
  http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/innovation/commentary-businessmethod-patentsdown-but-not-out
• WSJ: "Patent-lawyers, rejoice"
  http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/06/28/a-business-method-patent-is-dead-long-live-business-method-patents/ 

Recently, EPO-examiners published a book about software patents for programmers:
Amazon: Patent Law for Computer Scientists: Steps to Protect Computer-Implemented Inventions

A friend suggested to replace databases with software in the following cite:

"Databases are normally protected by copyright. […] Accordingly, if the improvement which you wish to claim relates only to the content of a DB, it is rather pointless in most cases to file a patent application, because in the majority of patent systems around the world, you will automatically have almost no chance of having a patent granted, as copyright is already foreseen as the appropriate protection. Although the law-maker may appear idiosyncratic at times, usually there is some method in the madness; it would simply be illogical to deliberately provide multiple legal protection means, when that would obviously result in conflict in the courts, with cases between owners of slightly different matter but differing protection rights being unnecessarily fought out." 

That would bring us back to the discussion 1995-2000 when software patents where rare. Patents will keep expanding everywhere until we put an end to patent on information and calculation. Call them business methods, software or tax evasion methods - they are all the same and are all close to what we do with our brain. Computers are the new pens and papers where we need to keep clear from patents on use. Otherwise we all infringe on patents since its all too easy to "invent" information methods.


Update:

There is a good reference to the cost applicable to software (abstract) patents in comments by Justice Stevens:
"If business methods could be patented, then many business decisions, no matter how small, could be potential patent violations. Businesses would either live in constant fear of litigation or would need to undertake the costs of searching through patents that describe methods of doing business, attempting to decide whether their innovation is one that remains in the public domain. See Long, Information Costs in Patent and Copyright, 90 Va. L. Rev. 465, 487–488 (2004) (hereinafter Long). But as we have long explained, patents should not “embaras[s] the honest pursuit of business with fears and apprehensions of concealed liens and unknown liabilities to lawsuits and vexatious accountings for profits made in good faith.” Atlantic Works v. Brady, 107 U. S. 192, 200 (1883).55"
 See groklaw: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100629014657710


/jonas WZAHWHHCAMV5

Groklaw and others comments on USPTOs request for comments and materals how to avoid patents on "abstract ideas" after the Supre Court ruling in the Bilski case. They seem to ask in relation to the "machine-or-transformation test" that the court down-played:
1. What are examples of claims that do not meet the machine-or-transformation test but nevertheless remain patent-eligible because they do not recite an abstract idea?
2. What are examples of claims that meet the machine-or-transformation test but nevertheless are not patent-eligible because they recite an abstract idea? 3. The decision in Bilski suggested that it might be possible to "defin[e] a narrower category or class of patent applications that claim to instruct how business should be conducted," such that the category itself would be unpatentable as "an attempt to patent abstract ideas." Bilski slip op. at 12. Do any such "categories" exist? If so, how does the category itself represent an "attempt to patent abstract ideas?"
I hope the community find lots of good answers. I'll get back with my own thoughts about this soon.
"Comments should be sent to Bilski_Guidance (at) uspto (dot) gov and must be received
by September 27, 2010."

It seems patents are no longer used just for defense in software. In Apple vs HTC, Microsoft vs TomTom, Microsoft vs SalesForce and now Oracle vs Google patents and lawyers are out for a fight. This will certainly be another public show case of whats rotten in the state of patents today. Its all about abstract properties piled up so tall that we cant see where uses of information and calculation is someones exclusive rights.

Its a shame since Java and the Java VM had so much community going for it. Now everyone will be less interested in building on something that you might as well be sued for contributing to.

I will just refer to the swpat.org page about this case at:
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Oracle_v._Google_%282010,_USA%29

"In Marshall, Texas, a patent that seems to cover the act of distributing a press release online (No. 6,370,535) was used to sue six companies that are in that business; […] The business proposition of eReleases, one of the defendants, is simple: For a one-time fee […] eReleases distributes press releases […] [f]or an additional fee, [it] will write a release. […] the [patent] application wasn't even filed until 1999—a year after he started his business. After a few hours’ online research, Kennedy found no less than 20 companies involved in the press release business before the filing date of the patent. Unfortunately, presenting that evidence in court would require him to pay those six-figure legal bills."

Source: http://thepriorart.typepad.com/the_prior_art/2010/07/gooseberry-natural-resources-patents-press-releases.html

"Let's start with what everyone knows—NPE patent litigation isn't going away. Since 2007, more than 1,500 companies per year are hit with lawsuits brought by the more than 300 NPEs that PatentFreedom track (using its fairly conservative definition of what constitutes an NPE). NPE litigation has grown from where it accounted for between 2 to 3 percent of all patent suits a decade ago to the point that it now accounts for 17 percent . For some operating companies, NPE litigation makes up more than 90 percent of their patent litigation docket."

Source: http://www.law.com/jsp/cc/PubArticleCC.jsp?id=1202464087434&Patent_Litigation_Weekly_Data_Shows_That_Troll_Problem_Persists

"A new lawsuit filed this week has accused Apple, Google and numerous others of patent infringement, alleging that the companies are improperly profiting from spam filtering technology created by InNova. The complaint was filed on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in Marshall.
The suit deals with U.S. Patent No. 6,018,761, related to technology that is used to differentiate between regular e-mail messages and unwanted advertising spam."

Source: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/07/21/apple_among_36_companies_targeted_in_e_mail_spam_patent_suit.html

"Why do entrepreneurs and startup companies file for patents? Why not? How often do startups acquire patents from others? How important are patents in fostering innovation at startups? In helping them raise financing? In providing leverage in cross-licensing negotiations? Are entrepreneurs and startups subject to patent thickets? These and many related questions were the subject of the Berkeley Patent Survey—the most comprehensive survey to date in the United States, probably worldwide, on how patents are used by and affect entrepreneurs, startups, and early-stage high technology companies.
[…] First, startups hold many more patents and applications than previously believed. […]
Second, startups report that they primarily file for patents to prevent against copying of their innovative products and services. […]
Our third major finding concerns startup executives' perceptions of the effectiveness of patents and other methods of providing competitive advantage. Interestingly, responses vary widely (see Fig. 2 below). Biotechnology companies rate patents as the most effective means of capturing competitive advantage, more effective than first-mover advantage (though the differences are not statistically significant), trade secrecy, reverse engineering, copyright, and other means. Software companies, on the other hand, rank patenting dead last in providing competitive advantage. "

Source: http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2010/07/patenting-by-entrepreneurs-the-berkeley-patent-survey-part-i-of-iii-1.html

Here are part II and part III of the survey:

"Our fourth major result is that our respondents—particularly software companies—find the high costs of patenting and enforcing their patents deter them from filing for patents on their innovations. […]
Last, we asked how much of a role patents play in the steps of the innovation process, […]. Somewhat surprisingly, the responses on the whole are rather tepid. For instance, biotechnology companies report that patents provide closer to a "moderate" than a "strong" incentive to engage in the innovation process. Among software companies, the results are even more striking, with them reporting that patents provide less than a "slight" incentive."

Source: http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2010/07/patenting-by-entrepreneurs-the-berkeley-patent-survey-part-ii-of-iii.html

"We acknowledge that our analysis to date of the study results do not allow us to say one way or the other whether the views of the executives accurately reflect the economics of the patent system. Thus, it would be wrong to conclude […] that one of the key findings of our study is that patents "play essentially no role in fostering innovation among startup companies … outside biotech and other limited areas." In the same fashion, it may also be wrong to conclude that […] the reality is that patents play a major role in promoting innovation. […] As such, we come to no conclusions in this article regarding the actual role patents play in fostering startup innovation (or not). […] The data, however, present an interesting paradox: If executives believe that patents provide relatively weak incentives to innovate, why are so many startup firms seeking them?"

http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2010/07/patenting-by-entrepreneurs-the-berkeley-patent-survey-part-iii-of-iii.html

Packt, publisher of specialist IT books, has today announced the launch of new discounts for any orders of multiple books. Visitors to www.PacktPub.com who purchase 2-4 books will automatically receive an 18% discount, while those who purchase 5-10 books will receive 20% off of the books’ cover prices.

These discounts are available across all of Packt’s hard copy books bought via the company’s website, and organisations of all sizes are offered the opportunity to obtain books for their employees or members at discounted prices.

Larger discounts are on offer as well. If a greater number of books are required, an email address has been set up ( BulkSales at PacktPub.com ) to help customers contact us about ordering in bulk much more efficiently. “Particularly since the launch of Packt Enterprise and Packt Open Source, Packt’s books are becoming ever more focussed, and therefore increasingly relevant to the specific needs of larger organisations.”, said Mark Nichols, marketing executive at Packt Publishing. “These new, easy to access discounts means that facilitating purchases in bulk will be much more simple.”

"while Justice Anthony Kennedy’s controlling opinion may not do much to change the status quo when it comes to the patent system, the more interesting Bilski story is one of an important "almost"—an "almost" that by all indications was hard-fought.
Indeed, for some folks—including those who hoped the Court would use the case to limit what they see as a plague of spurious patent litigation—this has to be a particularly painful “almost.”
While the justices were united in denying a patent to the Rand Warsaw and Bernard Bilski’s invention, they split 5-4 on the most important issue: whether it is ever appropriate to grant patents to a method of doing business."

Source: http://thepriorart.typepad.com/the_prior_art/2010/07/post-bilski-landscape-attempt-to-ban-biz-meth-patents-fails.html#more

"The German Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof) has recently made clear that every court has to take into account preceding decisions of the European Patent Office (EPO) and of courts of other contracting states to the European Patent Convention (EPC) if these decisions essentially concern the same questions. Although there is no principle of precedence in Germany – neither in respect of German nor of foreign decisions –, the recent ruling of the Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof, 15 April 2010, Xa ZB 10/09 – “Walzenformgebungsmaschine”) requires more than just regarding other decisions with favour. Every court has the obligation to deal with the arguments brought forward in other – German, EPO or foreign – decisions."

Source: http://kluwerpatentblog.com/2010/07/06/german-federal-supreme-court-strengthens-the-significance-of-epos-and-foreign-courts-decisions/

"What Bilski means for software is that the advantages of starting software businesses abroad have become even more clear. The tax situation and cost of living in, say, South America, is much better than in the U.S. currently. Now that startups have to live in fear of the uncertainty of the U.S. patent system, when they could be wiped off the face of the Earth by legal fees and customer loss in the span of a few months by the mere filing of a patent suit, and with an entire government that seems to have no sympathy toward their small businesses, why start a software company in the United States?"

Source: http://www.jasonmendelson.com/wp/archives/2010/06/bilski-redux-and-why-you-shouldnt-believe-everything-you-read.php

"Bilski also lines up perfectly for the scenario of a lost majority. It is a five-to-four decision. Justices Kennedy and Stevens are the authors of the principal opinions. The ruling took a long time to issue – it was argued in November but not decided until the last day of the Term – suggesting that something may have been amiss.
The Stevens opinion also reads as if it were originally an opinion for the Court […]. Further, the muddled vote of the majority’s fifth vote, Justice Scalia – who joined the majority in part and Justice Breyer’s concurrence in substantial part – suggests that he had significant difficulty in resolving the case. […] Another piece of evidence of rough compromise in Bilski is the Kennedy opinion itself. While it does decide the case, it is surpassingly narrow. It rejects the Federal Circuit’s “machine or transformation” test as the exclusive test of patentability and stops there. The Court does not attempt to provide further guidance, which is some evidence that five Justices could not agree on how to articulate an appropriate test. For all those reasons, it seems quite likely to me that Justice Stevens was originally going to author the Court’s opinion in Bilski but subsequently lost his majority to Justice Kennedy. […]
Finally, there remains the “so what” question. […] On the broadest level of whether the Court might revisit Bilski in a later case when Justice Scalia has the opportunity to consider the matter further, I think the answer is clearly no. In statutory cases like this one […] the Justices try to adhere to stare decisis. The decision in Bilski settles the question that business methods are patentable subject matter until Congress decides otherwise."

Source: http://www.scotusblog.com/2010/07/business-method-patents-nearly-bite-the-dust/

"[…] As near as I can tell from what I've learned, the entire “Bilski thing” appears to be a no-op. In short, as before, the Patent Office sometimes can and will deny applications that it determines are only abstract ideas, and the Supreme Court has now confirmed that the Patent Office can reject such an application if the Patent Office "knows an abstract idea when it sees it". Nothing has changed regarding most patents that are granted every day, including those that read on software. Those of us that oppose software patents continue to believe that software algorithms are indeed merely abstract ideas and pure mathematics and shouldn't be patentable subject matter. The governmental powers still seems to disagree with us, or, at least, just won't comment on that question.
Looking forward, my largest concern, from a policy perspective, is that the “patent reform” crowd, who claim to be the allies of the anti-software-patent folks, will use this decision to declare that "the system works". […]
We must not yield to the patent reformists, particularly at a time like this. […]
Since Bilski has given us no new tools for abolishing software patents, we must redouble efforts with tools we already have to mitigate the threat patents pose to software freedom."

Source: http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/06/30/bilski.html

"A day after reaching a decision in the business methods patent case Bilski v. Kappos, the Supreme Court this week remanded the diagnostic patent case Prometheus Laboratories v. Mayo Collaborative Services et al., to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals with an order to revisit the case in light of Bilski.
The lower court must now reconsider Prometheus with the understanding that the so-called "machine-or-transformation test" cannot be the sole determinant for patentability. While this presents an opportunity for the Federal Circuit to come up with new methods for determining patentability with regard to advanced technologies not grounded in a physical platform, nothing in the Supreme Court's recent actions sheds light on how the courts might deal with method patents related to genetic testing."

Source: http://www.genomeweb.com/dxpgx/supreme-court-tasks-lower-court-determining-criteria-dx-patentability?page=show