{"id":1362,"date":"2014-06-19T20:35:11","date_gmt":"2014-06-19T20:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cpip.gmu.edu\/?p=1362"},"modified":"2026-02-03T21:22:53","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T21:22:53","slug":"alice-gets-the-most-important-question-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/2014\/06\/19\/alice-gets-the-most-important-question-right\/","title":{"rendered":"[Archived Post] Alice Gets the Most Important Question Right"},"content":{"rendered":"

By far the most important takeaway from today\u2019s Supreme Court decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank<\/a> \u00a0<\/em>is the Court\u2019s acknowledgment that \u201cmany computer-implemented claims are formally addressed to patent-eligible subject matter.\u201d\u00a0 Despite failing to alleviate the profound confusion caused by its recent \u00a7101 analysis in cases like Bilski<\/a>, Myriad<\/a>,<\/em> Mayo<\/a>, <\/em>and plenty of earlier cases going all the way back to Benson<\/a><\/em>, the Court once and for all put to rest the absurd notion that computer-implemented inventions are not patentable under \u00a7101.<\/p>\n

To its credit, the Alice <\/em>Court issued its opinion without once using the term \u201csoftware patent,\u201d or even the term \u201csoftware.\u201d\u00a0 Many people don\u2019t realize that this is not a term of art in patent law<\/a>.\u00a0 There is no category of \u201csoftware patents\u201d at the PTO, although they do have classifications for every type of invention.\u00a0 The term is also not an official category in any statutes or court decisions. \u00a0Instead, \u201csoftware patent\u201d is merely a pejorative, rhetorical term used by patent-skeptics in the patent policy debate. \u00a0One hears endless arguments about \u201call those crappy software patents,\u201d or how we need to \u201cfix the software patent problem,\u201d as if there is something deeply wrong with providing patent protection for inventions implemented through software.\u00a0 But from an inventive or technological standpoint, the notion of creating a separate category of \u201csoftware patents\u201d doesn\u2019t even make sense. Any process that is implemented through software could also be implemented through hardware (as pointed out succinctly in the IEEE\u2019s amicus brief<\/a> in Alice<\/em>), and the efficiencies and design decisions that guide the choice between hardware and software are essentially irrelevant to the core patentability requirements under the Patent Act.<\/p>\n

Of course, the Alice <\/em>Court\u2019s decision still leaves inventors (not to mention patent examiners, lawyers, and judges) with shockingly little guidance for determining whether a claim is \u201cdirected to a patent-ineligible concept,\u201d such as an \u201cabstract idea,\u201d and if so, whether it \u201ccontains an \u2018inventive\u2019 concept sufficient to \u2018transform\u2019 the claimed abstract idea into\u00a0 a patent-eligible application.\u201d\u00a0 Citing Mayo<\/em>, the Court again acknowledges that, when broken down into their basic elements, all inventions rely upon abstract ideas, natural phenomena, or laws of nature.\u00a0 If that\u2019s the case, we might ask why the Court added any of these exceptions into its \u00a7101 analysis in the first place.\u00a0 After all, the Court\u2019s \u201cinventive concept\u201d test for saving claims that are directed at abstract ideas really just looks like a hybrid novelty\/non-obviousness determination.<\/p>\n

Despite the remaining doctrinal confusion about how to apply the Court\u2019s various pronouncements about which inventions are \u201cabstract ideas\u201d or \u201claws of nature\u201d and which are not, the Court deserves credit for getting the most important question right.\u00a0 At long last, it laid to rest the ridiculous argument that software isn\u2019t patentable. \u00a0Are claims to computer-implemented inventions patent-eligible subject matter?\u00a0 Of course they are.\u00a0 Inventors in the high-tech industry can at least breathe a sigh of relief.\u00a0 The Court has expressly recognized that the countless incredible technological inventions that form the bedrock of our innovation economy deserve patent protection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By far the most important takeaway from today\u2019s Supreme Court decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank \u00a0is the Court\u2019s acknowledgment that \u201cmany computer-implemented claims are formally addressed to patent-eligible subject matter.\u201d\u00a0 Despite failing to alleviate the profound confusion caused by its recent \u00a7101 analysis in cases like Bilski, Myriad, Mayo, and plenty of earlier […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3627,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,26,27,29,30,35,38,39,48,51,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-high-tech-industry","category-innovation-2","category-intellectual-property-theory","category-internet","category-inventors","category-patent-law","category-patent-theory","category-patentability-requirements","category-software-patent-high-tech-industry","category-supreme-court","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3627"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1362"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15928,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1362\/revisions\/15928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}