Patent-ineligible abstract ideas:
The Court has long held that §101, which defines the subject matter eligible for patent protection, contains an implicit exception for ‘“[l]aws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas.’ ” In applying the §101 exception, this Court must distinguish patents that claim the “‘buildin[g] block[s]’” of human ingenuity, which are ineligible for patent protection, from those that integrate the building blocks into something more. Using this framework, the Court must first determine whether the claims at issue are directed to a patent-ineligible concept. If so, the Court then asks whether the claim’s elements, considered both individually and “as an ordered combination,” “transform the nature of the claim” into a patent-eligible application. The claims at issue are directed to a patent-ineligible concept: the abstract idea of intermediated settlement.
IPPT20140619, USSC, Alice v CLS Bank International
No. 13–298
