From the USPTO: The U.S. Department of Commerce’s United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today announced that as part of its effort to solicit input from the public regarding the legal contours of patent subject matter eligibility, it will be holding two roundtables, one in November and one in December.
“In recent years, the jurisprudence on the very basic issue of what is patent eligible subject matter has been evolving requiring adjustments by innovators, businesses, lower courts and administrative agencies such as the USPTO,” said Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office Michelle K. Lee. “Our goal is to minimize any uncertainty in the patent system by ensuring we not only continue to apply the statute and case law in this area as faithfully as possible, but also understand the impact of the jurisprudence on innovation by assessing what, if any, changes might be helpful to further support innovation.”
In a notice published today in the Federal Register, the USPTO announced that it will begin a nationwide conversation on patent eligible subject matter through two roundtable discussions. The first roundtable will be held November 14, 2016, at the USPTO headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. This roundtable will focus on the USPTO’s continuing efforts to seek input from across the country and across industries on how the USPTO can improve the agency’s subject matter eligibility guidance and training examples. To facilitate a broader legal discussion on the contours of patentable subject matter, the USPTO will host a second roundtable on December 5, 2016, at Stanford University in Stanford, California. Through the power of USPTO’s nationwide footprint, each of our regional offices will also participate in both roundtables, enabling individuals and industries from around the country to share their perspectives at a location closest to them, in addition to written submissions.
Together, these roundtables will help facilitate discussion on patent subject matter eligibility in view of several decisions in recent years by the courts. If you wish to attend or participate in a roundtable, please see the Federal Register notice to learn more. You may also visit the USPTO’s Events Page.
Stay current with the USPTO by subscribing to receive e-mail updates. Visit our Subscription Center at www.uspto.gov/subscribe.
Commonly patents are seen as a reward for an effort, for making valuable knowledge available. Economists refer to the “positive extrenalities” of inventions. This perception prohibits a sound delimitation of patentable subject-matter.
Patents must be seen as the exception to the rule of freedom of competition and the associated freedom of ideas that is the core of western society.
Patents strem from the “privileges” granted by souvereigns long ago. As early as 1624, the Englush government acknowledged an excessive proliferation of these privileges.
This perception is actually reflected in the present statute, that allows only subject-matter to be patented that can be described in such a way that any PHOSITA can carry it out (Section 112). This provision does not replace 101, but subject-matter that can not be described in the required way can not be patentable in the first place. This approach is known in literature.
The logic is that only for this kind of subject-matter legal protection is needed as a restriction to the fundamental freedom of competition, in order to prevent destructuive competition.
including machines made new by new configurations of known components including software or programming based new configurations
Are you guys going to start claiming these “configurations” the way grown-ups have been claiming new compositions and articles since forever?
Of course you’re not.
Grown ups…?
Do grown ups constantly pretend that one optional form of claim drafting is somehow more than just an option?
…maybe certain sAmeone “grown-ups” will “respond” with a “that’s nice” or “so deep,” and not answer the direct and simple to understand, on point question here…
And then turn around and use the dissembling trick right away again…
The whine for people to act like grown-ups rings hollow.
I hope I will be forgiven for saying that much Section 101 comment up to now has been dire, and suggests that many practitioners remember little that they learned at law school.
In early 2014 the USPTO published eligibility guidelines which gave rise to a storm of comment. A seminar was held at the USPTO and broadcast online, at the conclusion of which Drew Hirshfeld asked for detained comments on the guidelines and specially emphasized the need for additional examples which might be useful in preparing training materials.
The comments that I filed can be downloaded from
link to uspto.gov
In addition to twelve pages of comment suggesting an alternative approach I created six detailed examples analysed in accordance with the principles set out in the guidance but showing how allowable subject matter could be identified in a range of life sciences inventions including a purified medicament which was a natural product, a DNA sequence which was a plasmid isolated from a bacterium, Louis Pasteur’s purified yeast which was noted by the Supreme Court in Chakrabarty, gunpowder as a combination of natural products, an expanded claim set based on the fact pattern in Funk Brothers v Kalo. In each case the example was referred to the corresponding issued US patent or judicial decision.
Of the more than 60 other comments filed, only ONE included the additional examples requested by Drew Hirshfeld, and only a minority contained detailed and useful analysis.
I have repeatedly urged that in trying to improve 101 analysis, we should not simply shoot off our prejudices, but should carefully and systematically study the relevant decisions, identify the rules of law relied on and then look for the ways in which eligible subject matter can be identified and we can improve our patent drafting. What Michelle Lee needs is not just a set of ego-trips but helpful and thoughtful analysis and proposals which point towards a better and more practical way forward.
The omens are not good, but we should try to meet the challenge.
Paul,
Your efforts are noteworthy – but see post 1.
This simply is not the job of the executive (nor the judicial) branch.
Post 1 could be right, but that is no reason not to try to find solutions.
It is if that attempt ot find prevents the Legislature from doing what they need to do (as well as “validates” a wayward judiciary).
The legislature will act about the time that the first flock of flying penguins passes Congress. For those who have not seen it, the BBC/Terry Jones April 1 film is a must:
link to youtube.com.
Finding an agreed position and passing it into law is a difficult proposition – it has been suggested at AIPLA meetings for about 4 years now. Until then there is no alternative but to make the most of the statute we have and pick our way through the judicial opinions.
Paul,
Regardless of how inept the legislature may be, our sovereign has set up the power to write the statutory law to be contained only within a single branch.
Your “Ends” may be laudable – but the “Means” very much matters.
Until then there is no alternative but to make the most of the statute we have and pick our way through the judicial opinions.
Oh, there’s certainly another alternative, Paul.
But Dennis doesn’t want me to talk about it in frank terms.
So I’ll just give you a hint: it’s where you just puff yourself up, pretend that you’re The Most Important Person Ever, and, and complain 24-7 about the end of technological progress, the end of the “rule of law”, and the loss of some rich people’s “freedom”. I could give you some specific examples of prominent folks elsewhere on the Internets who love this alternative but I’m sure you can find them yourself
And, no, it doesn’t work that well. But the folks who practice the alternative seem to love it anyway.
[shrugs]
“But Dennis doesn’t want me to talk about it in frank terms.”
You are misunderstanding what Prof. Crouch wants from you.
But please, go ahead with the usual and blame someone else for your errors.
Appeasement is one approach.
Pointing out that the rulings have no clothes, is another.
Well stated Les.
Paul, well said. Going back to Diehr, how it would be decided today? We don’t know, do we? Thinking further, (prompted by Les and his “no clothes” comment at 12.2) I imagined a machine for cutting pieces of very expensive cloth from a roll of said cloth, in huge numbers of pieces of individual size, to meet hundreds of orders for made-to measure suits for men. Of course, the warp and weft of the cloth has to aligned right, relative to the length direction of each cloth piece.
Suppose my client owns a computer program that instructs the machine in such a way that it uses cloth more efficiently, with less wasted cloth than hitherto.
How to claim it? Is it eligible? Is it math or is it technical? Is there a Worked Example in the EPO Guidelines for Examination, that might give a clue how the EPO Boards of Appeal would assess it? How about the USPTO?
Alas….. directed to the abstract idea of minimizing waste/maximizing usage….
Yes, and applying computer systems to do this is simply applying computer systems to a system that could be done by hand or “simply implementing a mathematical principle on a physical machine, namely a computer, [i]s not a patentable application of that principle.”
Diehr under the current Alice rules would also go down in flames.
And yet, the Supreme Court so recently stated that >I>Diehr was a “most on point case” and that the Court was expressly NOT CHANGING anything about “Diehr.
Clearly, the Supreme Court is wrong – one way or another (or both).
An auto suit system where in the suit layout algorithm has been sustituited by the following new suit layout algorithm… (give algorithm.)
‘Suit layout algorithm’ would be a term of art. Mention Diehr to the examiner.
Eligible in my scheme, because its a new, useful, assumed non-obvious method that results in information which is consumed by a non-human actor (the cutting equipment). MM, it can be non-obvious if the method is more than just geometry – perhaps it includes algos specific to the cutting equipment or properties of the cloth etc.
Doesn’t matter to eligibility then, Martin, that the problem to solve is nothing more than math, that the problem to be solved has nothing to do with cloth handling or tailoring, that the only expertise the inventor needed was skill in math?
No Max, that matters to patentability, not eligibility.
Eligibility should be about the kinds of inventions that may be patented. Patentability should be about whether a specific invention can be patented.
If the invention only teaches geometry, it has fails to meet the written description requirement that a patent teaches an invention, or it’s in the prior art and so lacks novelty, or the application of the prior art to the problem would be easily within the actions of a PHOSITA.
Martin your comment prompted my 12.3.4 below.
To be honest, I don’t understand your thinking when “the invention only teaches geometry”. But at least we agree that, if that is all there is, your “invention” is one that is not fit to patent.
You would strike it under 112 , for want of “written description” but if I were the court I would have already taken it out, under under 101.
So, the very same invention is made ineligible if instead the cutting information is provided to a human worker and the human worker makes the cuts manually?
So, insignificant post solution activity is the deciding factor?
Les, how is the information “provided”?
Is it output as a pattern? Computer voice directions suggesting “colder, warmer” as the scissors move?
Because then you have a blueprint, and we don’t patent blueprints.
You remain off on your understanding of utility, Mr. Snyder.
Shrug, does it make a difference? The claim would be to a method of cutting, not to a blue print…. but yes, one dependent claim might be to a dimensioned drawing on a display screen, another might be to a printed pattern to be attached to the cloth, another might be to some sort of lazer projection of the pattern on the cloth.
But your point is my point. You said it was eligible when a machine was doing the cutting and you say it is not eligible when a person does the cutting even though the cutting is insignificant post solution activity.
IMHO, since your rules would lead to this result, your rules are not appropriate.
To the contrary: a person using information where the information is the inventive result of a method is not trivial post-solution activity. Human use of information is automatically 100% abstract and impossible to fairly value.
If a non-human can make patentable use of the information, than have at it. Furthermore, in my scheme, the invention has to be construed anyway as a method that results in information.
The result of the example patent may well be construed to be the physical change in the cut cloth, in which case the eligibility is handled that way.
Max to your point about which PHOSITA is pertinent: that too must be construed when the result of the method is construed.
Clearly a procedural step akin to Markman is needed that does not foreclose summary judgement later, but does bound and construe what the invention is when the statutory class of patent is a method. This is where Alice should be applied and the bounds of the allowed invalidity defenses established.
“The result of the example patent may well be construed to be the physical change in the cut cloth, in which case the eligibility is handled that way. ”
I’m not sure I followed you there Martin. Did you concede that even under your system, a method that reads on, or literally calls for, a process that provides information to a human that then uses the information to complete a process would be patent eligible?
“To the contrary: a person using information where the information is the inventive result of a method is not trivial post-solution activity. Human use of information is automatically 100% abstract and impossible to fairly value. ”
Human use of information is abstract? No. Human use of information is very very real. Anyway, even if a human using information were abstract, thats just one part of Max’s claim. It does not contaminate the claim as a whole.
Good question Les.
Part of Mr. Snyder’s difficulty comes with the fact that ALL utility has a nexus with the human mind in way, shape, or manner.
It is only when something is TOTALLY in the mind that his “version” comes close at all to the reality of the law.
Human use of information is 100% abstract.
Utility is not a mental construct. If a gear meshes with another gear and thus transmits power, that is a real change in the world regardless of how anyone around to use the transmitted power feels about it.
Furthermore, patented devices can have lots of internal utility that does not create the final utility of the invention. All means plus function elements contribute utility without that utility being a specific component of the result.
Use of information by a person as a method step is not a problem in my scheme. What matters is the result of the method at its conclusion.
You are still confusing yourself Mr. Snyder on what utility within the patent laws cover.
As I noted, the distinction is that which is TOTALLY within the mind is off limits. Patent law fully allows some mental steps within a claim – when the claim is taken as a whole.
Re read our past discussions on those things outside of the mind (for example, why optical illusions exist – more nerve endings in the eye than can be accommodated on the neural path to the mind).
You continue to seek to impose your fantasy on an area of law that you clench tight your eyes to because you merely feel that you want a different system (and your feelings remain heavily biased by your own personal “tragedy”).
anon you are like a radio with no knobs. My ‘tragedy”is nothing of the sort – I’m radicalized on patents by several experiences and large ongoing expenses due to the still broken system. Let’s remind ourselves I am a real person working at a real company, while who knows what you are.
As to utility, as usual, you cite no law or case or even a coherent position other than someone is wrong about something.
I assert that method patents need to have a construed result to determine eligibility and patentability, unlike the other three statutory categories, where the invention is described in terms of structure.
The results of use, beyond bare utility, are not pertinent for new or improved machines, manufactures, and compositions of matter but they must be for a method, because method without intent cannot exist and the invention must be related to that intention.
I believe the word abstract literally means to be consumed in a human mind. A ban on abstract ideas means a ban on information used by human minds. It’s very, very straightforward.
As to the journey between fantasy and reality: that takes work, and I’m going to work any enterprise that moves the needle, while you work at nothing but these pages so far as anyone knows.
Mr. Snyder, the reply did not go through.
Let me restate it succinctly:
You are wrong.
Still.
Martin –
The process associated with television transmission ends with the displayed video and transduced audio information being useful only in the human mind.
Is a claim to that process, for that purpose and which would recite rasterization of video and modulation and demodulation of a carrier to carry both the audio and color video, not recite something “useful” and/or would the claim be to an abstract idea?
OK? No more thoughts? So now let’s add some technology to the pure math (4 colour mapping problem, travelling salesman problem, whatever).
Your contribution to the art is the discovery (say) that the closest tolerable approach of two laser cut lines in woven woollen cloth depends on i) the angle between the threads and the cut line ii) the number of threads per inch iii) the number of individual fibres in each thread and iv) the average fibre diameter. Otherwise, suit quality is prejudiced. Your program always will allow any two adjacent laser lines as close as this discovered relationship will allow, but never any closer. You get more cut pieces out of a bale of cloth than anybody else can, thanks to your invention.
Who is the inventor now? The guy who wrote the code or the guy who discovered the relationship?
And if it is the relationship that is the patentable invention, is it a software invention at all?
And if there is no such technology, no such relationship, but only math, is there any “contribution” and “promoting of the progress” within the ambit of the “useful arts”?
The claim in Diehr was directed to a method of operating a rubber-molding press for precision molded compounds, and mentioned an interval timer for monitoring the time of press closure, constantly determining temperature and when so indicated opening the press automatically. Although a computer was involved there were many real world human activities. So I think that the outcome would be similar today.
It is difficult to understand why the USPTO did not rely on 103 rather than 101. I cannot remember whether I was aged 14 or 15 when we covered the Arrhenius equation in our school chemistry course. However, lack of inventive step was not the objection pursued.
On the cloth example, it is a question whether there is insight into how to cut the cloth more efficiently and whether that insight can be expressed as a sequence of method steps. I am, however, less impressed with an abstract piece of software than a method of cutting cloth.
Mr. Cole, you are being a bit Polly Anna again.
How many lower court cases do you need to read to see that your version (as careful and as thoughtful as it may be) is just not the version that the courts are using.
The problem of course is that the Supreme Court simply writ too large.
I “get” that you want to apply what the Court has written in a more minimalistic manner, but that is just your view, which as it pains me to say, “I told you so,” is just not how the real world is using those Court decisions.
Probably because the profession has not briefed the court properly and given the needed interpretations. These things do not come out of the air – the judges act on the evidence and the arguments of counsel. If the correct case is not made out and the authorities are not explained in the appropriate manner, it is unreasonable to expect the judges (most of whom have not spent their working lives in our specialised field) to make up the deficiency.
I am not Pollyanna. I advocate careful analysis and hard work. If matters are to improve, that must be as a result of the combined efforts of the prosecution and the litigation specialisms of our profession.
By “Polly Anna,” I do NOT mean that you are not careful, considerate or thoughtful in your deliberations.
You most certainly are.
But your thought and care are just not in line with what is really happening.
You seem unaware of that disconnect.
(You should probably realize that there are indeed forces desiring the results coming from the less than critical care. This is not an oops of counsel.
…and let me add, the Justices (and judges who are just in the downward path of flow) are – or should be – fully aware of the situation. This is just not a “they aren’t briefed well enough” situation.
Incidentally, Anon, did you see the penguins?
Negative.
If you have not seen the BBC flying Penguins you should really click on the link I posted here or just Google BBC Flying Penguins. Believe me, they are unforgettable and hilarious.
I took a very quick look at your comments you submitted to the PTO.
It is absurd to say that isolating a portion of a DNA molecule does not add functionality. Of course it does. It adds at least the functionality of being able to use that portion of the molecule without the entire molecule interfering with the chemical reactions. It also add the functionality of being able to test for a specific condition with the isolated portion of the DNA.
It entirely depends on what you have isolated.
A region of bacterial DNA yes, since it is readily insertable into other organisms and can produce products of marketable significance.
You will find that one of my examples is precisely that.
But BRCA1 I am very doubtful. Do you mean just one strand? It is too big to amplify, as I understand it. And it can only fall into “manufacture” for which you need new form and new utility. The Supreme Court did not buy into that, and on the particular facts of that case I do not blame them.
MM yaps: Again: if you want to have a “discussion about “what people make” and “what people seek patents on”, then go have it in a first grade classroom where that discussion belongs. This a patent blog, administered by a pretty sharp law professor. I’m an attorney with a Ph.D. and many many years of experience litigating and prosecuting patents. On top of that, there’s a great chance that I was programming computers before you were born. My name has appeared in articles in the best science journals with some of the best computer modelling scientists in the world. You get the picture?
Was all this before or after you became a paid blogger? The only thing we know about you for sure is that for 11 years you have spent 40+ hours per week blogging. You are likely one of the policy setters and blogger.
I think you have ethical problems stating you are an attorney without qualifying all your remarks regarding 101 with the fact that you are part of P.R. of an organization funded by Google and others.
Ben: The problem with software patents is not some vague relationship to logic. It’s that they claim results rather than meaningfully defined methods. I don’t know how to define that threshold, but I think it starts with removing the CCPA’s near exemption from 112-1st for software.
Several responses to this:
1) The relationship between instructions for a computer and logic is not “vague” at all. That’s why we already have a substantial body of solid case law that says you can’t take ineligible data-processing logic and turn it into eligible logic by reciting “do it on a computer.”
2) The shunting of logic into our patent system is just one of the problems with software patents. It’s hardly the only one! But it’s a major one and it’s the cause of predictable downstream problems.
3) Functional claiming is also a huge problem. Everybody knows this. But in case you haven’t noticed, the super vociferous s0ftie w0ftie patent defenders who show up here insist on functional claiming as some kind of divine right.
4) You write “I don’t know how to define that threshold”. And I’m not surprised. You’re trying to define a threshold where a “new” data processing operation (logic) becomes tied to some “new” distinct and objective physical structure. That’s impossible to do unless the claim is limited to a specified machine (and I mean specified, not just some old box capable of receiving instructions).
Of course, the machine that is processing information may be represented by logic. My chair can be represented by static equations.
The fact is that all inventions can be represented by mathematical models.
So, —again—you are playing off the ignorance of the stacked Fed. Cir. and people like Obama that are just happy to continue to have the Google money flow into their coffers.
Night Writer,
Tegmark reflects your comment here.
Not sure why a comment reflecting that would be deemed “offensive”…
MM 3) Functional ….
The fact is that Mark Lemley’s paper on functional claiming is unethical. The cites do support what he claims they do. Moreover, he intentionally misrepresents claiming in the past. Additionally, by omission leaves off that technical fields expressly say they use functional statements to represent all known solutions. The fact is that Mark Lemley should be censured–at the very least. And, the fact is that Lemley putting down his rhetoric in a “law journal” with no review is vanity publishing.
Moreover, scope of enablement is the proper way to think about this.
The fact is all these problems are being caused by the anti-patent people continuing to put out scientifically and legally inaccurate and false statements which has so obfuscated the issues that no consistently body of law can be created. Moreover, Obama’s selecting Fed. Cir. judges based on Google’s “recommendation” has given us a group of judges that have no basis to understand inventions or science.
Of course, MM, you know all that and are paid to keep it going.
Claims to machine-based logic have been around since the beginning of the patent system. Your dogmatic singling-out of one of the building blocks of science and industry is bizarre.
Claims to machine-based logic have been around since the beginning of the patent system.
I’d love to know what you have in mind, specifically.
one of the building blocks of science and industry
Thanks for the admission.
LOL – that “admission” is just like saying that protons, neutrons and electrons are building blocks.
Exactly like that.
Your grasp of the Big Box put down seems to be purposefully obtuse.
Gomer Pyle: How does the software change the physical functioning of the vehicle’s engine? Hopscotch pattern of reduced fuel provision to varying cylinders or some such? Claim that method, assuming it’s new/inventive.
This is good advice, folks.
But it’s not going to make the s0ftie w0ftie crowd happy. After all, if you’ve got a new and non-obvious physically transformative method for fuel injection or combustion, then everybody knows that you should just claim that method straight up.
Adding an additional “computer controls this” limitation doesn’t “automatically” make that claim ineligible, of course. But it also doesn’t limit the claim in a meaningful way (except to create a possible “out” for an infringer). That’s because everybody knows — and has known for a long, long, long time — that computers can be used to “control” any patent eligible, controllable process that you can imagine.*
*the PTO, of course, still struggling with this for super mysterious reasons
The 104 comments here do not bode well for the PTO getting any useful realistic suggestions.
I’m 100% certain of two things:
1) The “it’s an improved machine!” crowd will be adequately represented by multiple dozens of “expert” software patent attorneys who never saw a software patent they couldn’t defend
2) The fact that this blog is relentlessly tr0lled by people who do nothing except whine about how their favorite patents aren’t getting granted (because there’s a shortage! and because there’s no place else to whine about that!) has zero relation to quality of suggestions that the PTO will receive
Lastly, the PTO isn’t interested in “realistic suggestions” about anything. They just know that it’s time to coddle their favorite stakeholders because the CAFC published a cr@p decision that those stakeholders are going to treat like the Holy Grail.
Thank you for the comment.
“Our goal is to minimize any uncertainty in the patent system by ensuring we not only continue to apply the statute and case law in this area as faithfully as possible, but also understand the impact of the jurisprudence on innovation by assessing what, if any, changes might be helpful to further support innovation.”
In addition to the suggestion at 5.0, lobby for the amendment of 35 USC 101 to read:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, including machines made new by new configurations of known components including software or programming based new configurations, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
That is belt and suspenders, as in truth, no change to 101 is required.
101 was written to be forward looking and inclusive – as it so needs to be because innovation itself is not (and cannot be) known a priori.
Instead of changing the words of Congress, we need for Congress to exercise its Constitutional power of jurisdiction str1pp1ng and remove the non-original jurisdiction of patent appeals from the Supreme Court and in place of the now brow-beaten and corrupted CAFC, institute a new Article III patent court that will fulfill the Congressional mandate of bringing clarity (and yes, read that as bright line rules) to patent law.
Thus, would the actual holding of Marburg be upheld, and the scrivining of the Supremes would be curtailed.
anon, Congress has already removed all appellate jurisdiction from the Supreme Court. AFAIK, no one has a right to appeal to the Supreme Court.
Congress can do more Ned – you know exactly what I am talking about.
The jurisdiction stripping power of Congress should be used to prevent the Supremes from taking patent appeals (not JUST any such “right” to an appeal to the High court – we both know that such is not there).
anon, Congress does not have the power to strip the Supreme Court of its inherent power to review the judgments of both US and State courts to the extent they involve interpretations of the constitution and laws of the United States.
Ned.
Patent appeals are simply not a matter of original jurisdiction for the Supreme Court.
Your view cannot be correct as it makes a nullity of the Congressional power provided by the Constitution.
Ned,
Given how all-inclusive you would make the “original jurisdiction” of the Supreme Court to be, what exactly do you think the Constitutional power of jurisdiction str1pp1ng – a power expressly given to the legislature as part of the checks and balances of the three branch system – what do you think that THAT power means?
You still cannot get it out of your head that review by writ is not an appeal.
And you have not answered my direct question as to what it means for Congress to have the Constitutional power of jurisdiction str1pp1ng with your expansive view of what the Supreme Court has power over.
Clearly, your lack is the much more damaging one.
Please fill in the gaping void in your argument.
The problem with this is that Congress cannot overrule what it cannot understand. When the SC came out with the rule that one could not use a MPF at the point of novelty, that was clear. So, Congress overruled that with 35 USC 112 para 6. With Alice, since no one knows what is or is not patentable, Congree can’t overrule it. It’s incomprehensible to begin with, so there’s really nothing to overrule.
The SC (and the CAFC) is (are) doing a disservice to the patent field, not only by having 101 jurisprudence change many times in the last 10+ years (I remember at least four different sets of rules), but also by creating rules that are nonsensical.