The USPTO’s December 4, 2025 memorandum on Subject Matter Eligibility Declarations (SMEDs) seeks to raise awareness of the “underutilized path” of submitting Rule 132 declarations, referred to as “SMEDs”, for supporting §101...more
Section 101 eligibility remains one of the most unpredictable and frequently contested areas of U.S. patent practice, particularly for software, artificial intelligence, and machine learning....more
Patent eligibility decisions are not new. Courts have grappled with what can and cannot be patented for years, especially in the technology and software spaces. A recent decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal...more
The new United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director John A. Squires was sworn in on September 22, 2025 and wasted no time that week in expanding patent eligibility for AI related inventions. ...more
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) has issued a decision in an ex parte appeal reversing an examiner’s final rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 101 of claims directed to artificial intelligence (AI) based business methods. Ex...more
Section 101 Blog If you work anywhere near patent eligibility, the rhythm is familiar. Another year, another reform drumbeat. Draft language circulates on the Hill. Industry groups publish letters. Academics and the familiar...more
Introduction - The new United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director John A. Squires was sworn in on September 22, 2025 and wasted no time that week in expanding patent eligibility for AI related inventions. In...more
What’s New: USPTO Embraces Evidence-Driven § 101 Practice - The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently issued two coordinated memoranda explaining how applicants can use Subject Matter Eligibility Declarations...more
Key Takeaways - Easier path to eligibility: The USPTO’s new guidance explains how to use sworn statements (SMEDs) to provide facts showing an invention is eligible for a patent....more
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued new guidance encouraging applicants to use subject matter eligibility declarations (SMEDs), highlighting their potential influence at all stages of the...more
On Dec. 4, 2025, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Squires issued new guidance to patent examiners and applicants via a pair of memoranda (Guidance) encouraging the use of subject matter eligibility...more
In follow up to the August 4, 2025 guidance and September 26, 2025 In re Desjardins decision, the USPTO recently took another significant step to provide patentees pursuing patent protection additional tools to address patent...more
Every year has its “it” term.In 2025, the crown belonged to AI, and rightfully so. AI dominated the headlines, flooded the USPTO’s dockets, and triggered more §101 rejections than any examiner would care to admit. If you...more
On December 4, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued a memorandum to the Patent Examining Corps reinforcing its existing subject matter eligibility framework under 35 U.S.C. § 101 and calling renewed attention to...more
Late last week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published three memos addressing its latest policies regarding subject matter eligibility. These included “Subject Matter Eligibility Declarations” from Director...more
On December 4, 2025, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director John Squires issued two memoranda addressing subject matter eligibility and spotlighting an additional pathway to overcome a rejection under 35 U.S.C. §...more
Patent practitioners have seen a shifting landscape for patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101 since the Supreme Court’s 2012 and 2014 seminal decisions in Mayo and Alice. Now, the United States Patent and Trademark Office...more
On November 4, 2025, the Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) designated as precedential an appeals review panel (ARP) decision vacating the Patent Trial & Appeal Board’s § 101 rejection of claims...more
From a technical standpoint, everything a computer does involves reading, manipulating, and storing information through microcode instructions that move around 0’s and 1’s. Each operation performed by a processor, such as...more
It has been over a decade since the Supreme Court blessed us with the two-step framework for patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101 in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank. First, one must determine whether the claim at issue is...more
On October 31, 2025, Director Squires spoke to the American Intellectual Property Law Association and provided a forceful statement on his view for the direction of patent law. Of particular interest were his comments on...more
Patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101 should be a straightforward threshold question: any “new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter” is eligible for protection. Yet over time, this once-clear...more
There is pending legislation before Congress that, if passed, would shift the current patent landscape in favor of patent owners. The following three bills have been introduced in Congress with bipartisan sponsorship and...more
For a decade, innovators at the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and precision medicine have faced a stubborn paradox: the very breakthroughs in software and machine learning that enable early cancer detection and...more
With the continued rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI), the question of how the United States Patent and Trademark Office (the “USPTO”) and courts will apply patent-eligibility requirements to AI has been at the...more