As the article explains, court decisions have ruled against protecting natural laws and phenomena as well as abstract ideas; but in a 1981 case, Diamond v. Diehr, the Court decided for a patent on a rubber curing process using a chemical equation. An interesting aspect of the contest is that in the lower courts the plaintiff didn't raise the issue of patenting natural phenomena, instead arguing the case on other grounds, as the Burlington, N.C., firm doesn't wish to undermine its own patents, thereby hoisting itself by its own petard.
He who lives by the patent....
