On June 19, 2014, the Supreme Court decided Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International, holding that inventions claiming mere computer implementation of an abstract concept are not patent eligible. 1 This decision informs the analysis for identifying patent ineligible subject matter: A court first determines whether a disputed claim is directed to a law of nature, natural phenomena or abstract concept and, if so, then decides whether the claims as a whole, both individually and ''as an ordered combination,'' contain additional elements that '' 'transform the nature of the claim' into a patent eligible application."2 Courts have referred to this second step as a search for ''something more'' that confers patent eligibility.3 The concern driving this test is pre-emption—patent law must not grant monopolies over the ''building blocks of human ingenuity.''4
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Originally published in Bloomberg BNA's Patent, Trademark & Copyright Journal, Vol. 90, No. 2215.
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