IAAL. When SCOTUS takes a patent case, they're like a bull in a china shop. They're not engineers or patent lawyers, so they undo a lot of stuff that has been carefully worked out by the Patent Office and special patent courts. That said, the area of non-device patents has grown enormously over the last few years, and there was a great need to set some ground-rules to cut back on overreaching claims while giving people with new ideas a chance to make a profit from their innovations. In my view, Bilski is a monster (and necessary) bitch slap for methodology patents, which had gotten out of bounds. (IMO, the next one will come on copyright overreaching.) The Supremes deliberately left the opinion vague to let the experts work out the details.