Under the U.S. Patent Act, one can patent “any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof.” Common exceptions to what can be patented include laws of...more
Decisions by the Supreme Court and the Federal Circuit over the past decade have wrestled with the question that 35 U.S.C. §101 was intended to answer: What is eligible for patent protection? The text of §101 says a patent...more
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently issued a memorandum to its patent examining corps that changes the way examiners should evaluate the question of whether a claim element is “well-understood, routine,...more
It is time to take a deeper look and derive or strengthen some strategies to argue for patentable subject matter eligibility during patent prosecution, now that the first round articles on the USPTO Memorandum April 19, 2018,...more
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently published a new revision to the Ninth Edition of the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP) (Revision 08.2017). This revision added a number of chapters...more
Struggling to keep case law relating to subject matter eligibility organized? In February 2018, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) released an improved Eligibility Quick Reference Sheet, providing patent...more