Analysis: The "Lorenzo Jones" case emerges (SCOTUS Blog)

I fear that the court will do what they often do, which is to issue a narrow ruling. They'll throw out this patent, with language that disallows a bunch of other "business method" patents. For example, Priceline has patented the concept of doing a reverse auction with a computer, if I understand correctly. That's probably dead. But the ruling will be narrow enough to leave software patents for future rulings (neither blessed by the court nor thrown out by the court).
<p>
The reason they might go in that direction is that they are worried about the consequences of just doing what the SFLC is arguing for: they probably have so many friend-of-the-court briefings predicting disaster that the might try to avoid just killing all software patents.