The Supreme Court on Monday refused to weigh in on whether software, online-shopping techniques and medical diagnostic tests can be patented, saying only that inventors' request for protection of a method of hedging weather-related risk in energy prices cannot be granted.

The high court unanimously agreed with a lower court ruling that threw out Bernard Bilski and Rand Warsaw's patent, a decision many said could endanger patents in an increasingly high-tech world. But the high court said they did not need to make a broad sweeping decision about patents to dispose of Bilski and Warsaw's case.

"The patent application here can be rejected under our precedents on the unpatentability of abstract ideas," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court. "The court, therefore, need not define further what constitutes a patentable process."

The Supreme Court has already said that abstract ideas, natural phenomena and laws of nature cannot be patented. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit added that a process cannot be patented unless it is "tied to a particular machine or apparatus" or if it "transforms a particular article into a different state or thing."

A federal judge will hear closing arguments Wednesday in a groundbreaking trial on a lawsuit that seeks to establish marriage as a fundamental constitutional right for gays and lesbians.

The latest effort to overturn California's Prop. 8 gay-marriage ban is wrapping up in federal court today, with Ted Olson and David Boies--the attorneys for George W. Bush and Al Gore in the Florida 2000 court case--presenting final arguments. (For a liveblog of what's going on, check in with Firedoglake.) Gay-marriage proponents have voiced optimism about this case since it mirrors the case that successfully ended California's gay-marriage ban in 2008, ultimately leading to the Prop. 8 campaign to ban it again.

The case is being heard by District Judge Vaughn Walker (who heard the al Hamarain case and ruled the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program illegal); it seems likely that, regardless of the result, it will be appealed ad infinitum.

Lawyers for 39-year-old Bill Furman have asked in the federal discrimination lawsuit filed Wednesday that the rule be changed so he has the chance to become eligible for certification. The state police oversees certification.

Furman is a parking officer and constable. He lives in Boalsburg.

He was set to attend a police training academy last year when he said he was told he couldn't continue because of his hearing aids.

Eighteen-year-old Andre Butler pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and other charges on Monday, the day his trial was scheduled to begin.

Police say Butler, then 16, was behind the wheel of a stolen Cadillac Escalade and leading police on a high-speed chase in September 2008 when the SUV crashed into a police car.

Forty-year-old Officer Isabel Nazario, who was in the cruiser's passenger seat, was killed instantly. Her partner was seriously injured.

Federal prosecutors say the man claiming to be Jason Robert Evers — the name of the dead boy — must be hiding something but he will not say what it is.

He is listed as John Doe in court documents, including the criminal complaint charging him with providing false information on a passport application leading to his arrest in Idaho last month.

The man has worked for the last eight years as an Oregon liquor control investigator, but has been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of his case.

He was extradited from Idaho this week and made his initial appearance in federal court in Oregon on Thursday.