Metabolite schedule

Chief Justice Roberts has recused himself from Metabolite, so there will be eight justices deciding the case including Stevens. Here is the schedule:

Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings v. Metabolite Laboratories, Inc., Supreme Court No. 04-607: Briefing schedule through January 2005; hearing February-April 2006; decision by June 2006.

Although the case may be decided on narrower grounds, it's possible that this case could have profound implications for software and business method patents, especially if Justice Stevens' methodology in the 1978 case Parker v. Flook is applied here. I describe a clarified version of this methodology in a paper on the origin of U.S. software patents I wrote earlier this year. Here is a brief summary of that methodology and of Metabolite.