Tags: Case, Legal Case, Supreme Court Of The United States Case, Unit Of Work.
Gottschalk v. Benson 409 U.S. 63 (1972) was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that a process claim directed to a numerical algorithm as such was not patentable because the patent would wholly pre-empt the mathematical formula and in practical effect would be a patent on the algorithm itself. That would be tantamount to allowing a patent on an abstract idea contrary to precedent dating back to the middle of the 19th century.