Patent Subject Matter Eligibility

Patentable Subject Matter Under the U.S. Patent Act

Not everything is patent eligible.  Section 101 of the Patent Act addresses the issue of which types of inventions will be considered for patent protection in the United States.

Current law—Section 101 of the Patent Act of 1952—broadly defines patent-eligible subject matter as “any” new and useful, “process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter,” or “improvement thereof,” which mirrors the definition of what constitutes patentable subject matter under the Patent Act of 1793.

  • The Patent Act of 1793 Act, the drafting of which is largely attributed to Thomas Jefferson, provided that “any new and useful art,1 machine, manufacture or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement on [the same]” was patentable.

Notwithstanding the plain language and the broadly permissive nature of the Patent Act’s subject matter eligibility principles, the U.S. Supreme Court has carved out three judically created exceptions—laws of nature, physical phenomena (“natural phenomena” is the presently preferred term), and abstract ideas—outside the eligibility bounds of Section 101.

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  1. Patent Act 1793, § 1; the term “art” was replaced by “process” in 1952, but this term is itself defined as a “process, art or method.” 35 U.S.C. § 101.

What is Alice?

In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 573 U.S. 208 (Alice) brought to the forefront Section 101 of the Patent Act (35 U.S.C. § 101), which governs what types of inventions are eligible for patent protection.

Notwithstanding the plain and unambiguous meaning of Section 101 that any invention falling within one of the four stated categories of statutory subject matter may be patented, the Court’s precedents provide three (judically created) “exceptions” to § 101’s broad patent-eligibility principles: laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas.

The Supreme Court’s Mayo/Alice “Framework”

In Alice, the Supreme Court held that the two-part analytical framework for determining the Section 101 patent-eligibility of a patent claim, which the Court previously articulated in the Mayo Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus Labs., Inc., 566 U.S. 66 (2012) (“Mayo”) decision on the patentability of a diagnostic method, applied to computer-implemented inventions.  The Supreme Court recognized, however, that “[a]t some level, ‘all inventions . . . embody, use, reflect, rest upon, or apply laws of nature, natural phenomena, or abstract ideas.’” Alice, 573 U.S. at 217 (alteration in original) (quoting Mayo at 71).

“Thus, an invention is not rendered ineligible for patent simply because it involves an abstract concept.” Id.  Rather, “applications” of abstract concepts “to a new and useful end . . . remain eligible for patent protection.” Id. (quoting Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U.S. at 67).

Abstract Ideas

Concepts identified by the courts as abstract ideas, and thus patent-ineligible, include certain methods of organizing human activity, such as fundamental economic practices (Alice, 573 U.S. at 219–20; Bilski v. Kappos, 561 U.S. 593, 611 (2010)); mathematical formulas (Parker v. Flook, 437 U.S. 584, 594–95 (1978)); and mental processes (Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U.S. 63, 67–68 (1972)).

“The Alice Test”

At step one of the Alice/Mayo framework, the court must first “determine whether the claims at issue are directed to one of those patent-ineligible concepts”—i.e., an abstract idea, a law of nature, or a natural phenomenon.  Alice, 573 U.S. at 217.

If a claim is “directed to” a patent-ineligible concept, such as an abstract idea, the court proceeds to step two, where the court “must examine the elements of the claim to determine whether it contains an ‘inventive concept’ sufficient to ‘transform’ the claimed abstract idea into a patent-eligible application.” Id. at 221.  “A claim that recites an abstract idea must include ‘additional features’ to ensure ‘that the [claim] is more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the [abstract idea].’” Id. (alterations in original) (quoting Mayo, 566 U.S. at 77).  “[M]erely requir[ing] generic computer implementation[] fail[s] to transform that abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention.” Id.

Patentability Requirements

Even if a claimed invention qualifies as eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101, it must also satisfy the other conditions and requirements of the patent laws, including the requirements for novelty (35 U.S.C. § 102), nonobviousness (35 U.S.C. § 103), and adequate description and definite claiming (35 U.S.C. § 112).  See, e.g., Bilski v. Kappos, 561 U.S. at 602.


USPTO Examination Guidance by Date of Issuance

CURRENT ELIGIBILITY GUIDANCE

The USPTO’s current eligibility guidance is found in the Ninth Edition (February 2023 publication) of the Manual of Patent Examination Procedure (MPEP) Sections 2103 through 2106.07(c).

2019 Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance

Memorandum - Decisions of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit


OLDER GUIDANCE

December 2016 business method example update

May 2016 subject matter eligibility update

July 2015 subject matter eligibility update

2014 interim guidance on patent subject matter eligibility




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Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Court Decisions

U.S. SUPREME COURT LANDMARKS

Current confusion about Section 101 doctrine dates back to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1972 decision in Gottschalk v. Benson, which was further refined by the Court’s 1978 decision in Parker v. Flook.  During the Benson–Flook epoch, virtually no one submitted patent applications covering subject matter related to software inventions because software was believed to be unpatentable subject matter, in large part due to the decisions in Benson and Flook.

In 1981, in Diamond v. Diehr, the Supreme Court opened the door to the patentability of computer programs by ruling that controlling a physical process, by executing a computer program, did not preclude patentability of the invention as a whole.  After Diehr, patent practitioners found that software could be patented so long as it was combined with another patentable process or machine, even if the software was the only novel feature.

The 2012 decision in Mayo on the patentability of a diagnostic method effectively overruled Diamond v. Diehr, upending three decades of relatively stable and predictable law described in Diehr in 1981.  The decision in Mayo stated the Court’s precedents insist that a patentable application of a natural law must contain “elements or a combination of elements, sometimes referred to as an ‘inventive concept,’ sufficient to ensure that the patent in practice amounts to significantly more than a patent upon the natural law itself” (nonetheless, the Supreme Court has not explicitly defined what constitutes a sufficient “inventive concept”).

In 2014, in Alice, the Supreme Court held that the two-part analytical framework for eligibility analysis, which the Court previously articulated in the Mayo decision, applied to computer-implemented inventions—thereby compounding the chaos surrounding patent eligibility law.  In the post-Alice epoch, a groundswell of criticism has continued to grow regarding the jurisprudence for determining patent eligibility under Section 101.


U.S. SUPREME COURT DECISIONS

Since the early twentieth century, at least ten Supreme Court cases have directly addressed the issue of patent-eligible subject matter.




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Post-Alice Patent Eligibility Decisions

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) | Decisions Upholding Claims

Listed below are cases (since the Supreme Court’s Alice decision in 2014) where the CAFC held that the asserted claims were patent eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101.

Computer-Implemented Technology | Patent Eligible    CAFC precedential decisions finding that the claims at issue were not directed to an abstract idea, or that if so directed, the claims recited an “inventive concept” or “something more” than the abstract idea to transform the nature of the claim into a patent-eligible application.

2022
2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2014

Life Sciences Technology | Patent Eligible

2020 2019 2018 2016


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