Here’s an effective way to get to grips with Bilski without piling through the briefs and precedent. 

(Though, for those that want them, here are the CAFC opinion, Questions, Petition for Certiorari and Amicus Briefs – (thanks to Patently’O).)

Associate Professor Adam Mossoff from George Mason University School of Law wrote in about this great podcast as follows:

Dear Mr. Bucknell,http://www.ww.fed-soc.org/publications/pubid.1587/pub_detail.asp

You run a great blog dedicated to patent law issues, and so I thought  you may want to alert your readers to a podcast debate between Professor  Michael Risch (West Virginia University) and Professor Joshua Sarnoff  (American University) on the Bilski case. They each filed competing amicus briefs before the en banc panel last year, and so they were ideal debate opponents. I moderated the debate, which is why I’m alerting people to it.

Josh and Michael do an impeccable job covering the legal, policy and historical issues in the Bilski case, and they even do a little predictive gaming about the case at the end of the debate. This 30-minute podcast is a great summary of the case and all of the issues that will be raised in argument — and ultimately in the opinion itself.

The podcast is part of a podcast series, called SCOTUSCast, which is run by the Federalist Society. The purpose of SCOTUSCast is to provide short summaries of Supreme Court cases, and, keeping with the Society’s goals, the debate between Josh and Michael is a balanced presentation of all sides of the debate.

The podcast is available for download at iTunes (via the SCOTUSCast podcast series), or at the Federalist Society’s website, which has a
nice description of the case and links to the court opinions and other Bilski-related documents.

Best regards,
Adam