Finally, on the last day of its current term, the Supreme Court has issued its long-awaited Bilski Decision.  While affirming the Federal Circuit's decision, the Supreme Court held that, while oftentimes helpful, the Federal Circuit's test for determining what processes and methods qualify as patent eligible subject matter (known as the "machine or transformation" test) was simply too narrow to serve as the exclusive test of patent eligibility.  

As for the correct test for patent ineligibility, after proclaiming that "ingenuity should receive a liberal encouragement", the Bilski Court left us with little new guidance as to how to spot subject matter that is patent ineligible, only re-affirming that unless a concept is a law of nature (e.g., the universal law of gravitation attraction), a physical phenomena (e.g., snow flake patterns), or an abstract idea (e.g., hedging a bet, as in Bilski), it is patent eligible subject matter.

The take-away point is that generally, business methods, and software-oriented processes, remain patent eligible, provided they are, e.g., novel, non-obvious, and properly described.  In other words, it appears that the Supreme Court has encouraged us to get back to business as usual in the patent world.