Law360, New York (September 04, 2009, 12:15 PM ET) -- The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recently provided patent examiners with new “Interim Examination Instructions for Evaluating Subject Matter Eligibility Under 35 U.S.C. § 101” (“interim guidelines”)[1].

These interim guidelines should result in more uniform examination of software and business method claims under the machine/ transformation test of the Federal Circuit’s Bilski decision, until the Supreme Court decides the pending appeal of that decision.

Additionally, the USPTO has rejected aspects of a controversial federal district court decision that threatened the validity of hundreds of previously patented...