"So, an estate plan [is patentable]?" asked Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. "A tax avoidance method? How to resist a corporate takeover? All of these are patentable?"

The media are reporting that the US Supreme Court was extremely skeptical today about business method patents, in the long-awaited and highly anticipated Bilski oral argument.  Over the last several years, I've often been asked if legal techniques will be patentable -- the classic example being tax avoidance ideas -- and I've said that I sure hope the courts will kill that idea.  Looks like the court will provide us with some more restrictive rules about what is patentable.  Legal methods probably won't be.