Is your invention patent-eligible?

It's the two-step framework the USPTO and courts use to decide patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. §101. Step one asks whether a claimclaimA numbered sentence at the end of a patent that legally defines what the inventor owns. The most important section.Read more → is directed to a judicial exception — an abstractabstractA short summary at the front of the patent describing the invention. Not legally binding.Read more → idea, a law of nature, or a natural phenomenon. If it is, step two asks whether the remaining elements add an 'inventive concept' amounting to significantly more than the exception itself.

Yes, software can be patented, but it has to do more than run an abstractabstractA short summary at the front of the patent describing the invention. Not legally binding.Read more → idea on a generic computer. ClaimsclaimsThe numbered statements at the end of a patent that legally define what the inventor owns.Read more → that improve how a computer or another technology actually works — as in Enfish v. Microsoft — are eligible. Claims that merely automate a business method on ordinary hardware usually are not, which is what sank the patent in Alice v. CLS Bank.

The USPTO's 2019 guidance sorts abstractabstractA short summary at the front of the patent describing the invention. Not legally binding.Read more → ideas into three groups: mathematical concepts (formulas and calculations), methods of organizing human activity (such as fundamental economic practices), and mental processes that a person could perform in their mind or with pen and paper.

Sometimes, but it is difficult. A pure method of organizing human activity is treated as an abstractabstractA short summary at the front of the patent describing the invention. Not legally binding.Read more → idea — the Supreme Court rejected a hedging method on that basis in Bilski v. Kappos. To be eligible, a business method generally needs a genuine technical improvement, not just 'do it on a computer.'