The Patent ACT

THIS CASEBOOK contains a selection of decisions of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that analyze, interpret and apply provisions of the Patent Act. * * * Section 101 allows inventors to obtain patents on "any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof." 35 U.S.C. 101. However, "this provision contains an important implicit exception: " an inventor may not patent laws of nature, natural phenomena, or abstract ideas. Alice, 134 S.Ct. at 2354. To assess whether a patent claim violates this exception to the terms of 101, the Supreme Court has set forth a two-step framework, in which a court determines: (1) whether the claim is "directed to a patent-ineligible concept," i.e., a law of nature, natural phenomenon, or abstract idea, and, if so, (2) whether the elements of the claim, considered "both individually and 'as an ordered combination, '" add enough to "'transform the nature of the claim' into a patent-eligible application." Id. at 2355 (quoting Mayo Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus Labs., Inc., 566 U.S. 66, 78, 132 S.Ct. 1289, 182 L.Ed.2d 321 (2012)). In the context of an abstract-idea challenge to a patent claim, those two steps are typically understood as the "abstract idea" step and the "inventive concept" step. See Affinity Labs of Tex., LLC v. DIRECTV, LLC, 838 F.3d 1253, 1257-58 (Fed. Cir. 2016). While each step involves its own separate inquiry, we have explained that they may "involve overlapping scrutiny of the content of the claims." Elec. Power Grp., LLC v. Alstom S.A., 830 F.3d 1350, 1353 (Fed. Cir. 2016). Interval Licensing LLC v. AOL, Inc., 896 F. 3d 1335 (Fed. Cir. 2018)