The Supreme Court takes on frivolous patents, and might end up eliminating protection for software.

Bernard Bilski, the head of the natural gas division at a Pittsburgh-area utility, had an idea. Recognizing the risks of weather conditions in the demand for energy, Bilski came up with a mathematical model for hedging meteorological uncertainty to smooth prices for consumers. Convinced his method broke new ground, Bilski applied for a patent in 1997. The Patent Office rejected his application, however, a decision upheld last year by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

The Federal Circuit’s decision was something of a surprise. In the infamous State Street Bank case of 1998, the same court lifted a longstanding ban on paper-and-pencil (or “business method”) patents, a decision that threw open the floodgates for tens of thousands of claimed inventions. In rejecting Bilski’s application, the court reversed itself again.

Today, Nov. 9, Bilski will have his day at the U.S. Supreme Court. No one except perhaps Bilski himself expects him to prevail. Given recent Supreme Court cases reigning in the Federal Circuit’s expansive view of patent law, the justices are poised to go even farther than the lower court in limiting the mountain of junk applications burying the Patent Office. The short but notable life of business-method patents is likely at an end. Patents for other information-age inventions, notably software, may not be far behind.

No one should be sorry to see them go. In the last 10 years, the danger of granting patents for mere ideas and simple systems has become painfully clear. Patents have been approved for everything from “methods of training janitors to dust and vacuum using video displays” to “methods for enticing customers to order additional food at a fast food restaurant.” Patents were allowed for encouraging cats to exercise using a laser pointer and for reserving office bathrooms (IBM got that one). Inevitably, U.S. Patent No. 6,049,811 was granted—a patent on the process of obtaining a patent. In 2007 alone, the Patent Office received over 10,000 applications for business-method patents. The current backlog is over 600,000 applications.

It’s no surprise that in the wake of such madness, lawsuits to enforce junk patents have swamped U.S. courts. One estimate found that offering a new online product or service likely infringes more than 4,000 patents, many of them ridiculously broad. Patent litigation in the United States, according to another study, costs more than $2 billion a year, a sum ultimately paid by consumers.

And it’s not as if the lack of patent protection for business methods was holding anyone back. In the age of the Internet, the half-life of even billion-dollar business ideas may be only a few years, hardly needing or deserving the intense protections granted, say, to new drugs. Meanwhile, the ability to gain even a fleeting patent on basic elements of electronic commerce has thrown a full set of wrenches into the machinery of digital life.