Technically Legal

The new story about the Bilski case is how long it has taken the Supreme Court to release the opinion. The good folks at Patently-O have found a chart indicating the amount of time elapsed between oral argument and a written opinion in eighteen recent patent cases taken by the Supreme Court.

The average wait is about ninety days, with a median of seventy-seven. The nearest competitor to Bilski is KSR v. Teleflex, which totally re-wrote obviousness law, or, depending on how you look at it, brought the Federal Circuit back in line with what it always should have been. KSR took 153 days, meanwhile, Bilski will be a minimum of 210 days before its release. The next day opinions will be released is the 7th, with the last day to release opinions being the 28th of June. There is always a chance, albeit a slim one, that Bilski will be re-argued next term, if the Justices can’t come to a decision, or think one issue wasn’t sufficiently addressed the first time around.

So far no one is really revising what they think the outcome will be based on the delay, but delays in releasing cases generally indicates that the court is fragmented on how they want to rule. This would be a stark departure from recent patent cases taken by the Supreme Court, which have been decided unanimously.

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