Death Watch for Software Patents? Cross your fingers...(as Jeff Bezos holds his breath)

We can only cross our fingers. Patent Law Blog reports:

    Taking sua sponte action, the Federal Circuit has ordered an en banc rehearing of the In re Bilski case - asking the following five questions:

       1. Whether claim 1 of the 08/833,892 patent application claims patent-eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101?
       2. What standard should govern in determining whether a process is patent-eligible subject matter under section 101?
       3. Whether the claimed subject matter is not patent-eligible because it constitutes an abstract idea or mental process; when does a claim that contains both mental and physical steps create patent-eligible subject matter?
       4. Whether a method or process must result in a physical transformation of an article or be tied to a machine to be patent-eligible subject matter under section 101? 
       5. Whether it is appropriate to reconsider State Street Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Financial Group, Inc., 149 F.3d 1368 (Fed. Cir. 1998), and AT&T Corp. v. Excel Communications, Inc., 172 F.3d 1352 (Fed. Cir. 1999), in this case and, if so, whether those cases should be overruled in any respect?

Translation? All 16 Judges who currently sit on the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which has jurisdiction over U.S. Patent and Trademark Office decisions, are going to get together and decide whether this patent of a method of managing the risk of bad weather through commodities trading, with no specific technology involved, can actually be patented.

Pay special attention to #5. That case is the one that "opened the floodgates" to many, many software and process patents, including "One-Click,"  that whole BlackBerry scare, and so on and so forth.

This could get very, very interesting.