PERA 2025: Eligibility Reform Returns to Capitol Hill

by Dennis Crouch

On October 8, 2025, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property held a hearing on the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA) of 2025 (S. 1546), legislation that would fundamentally reshape 35 U.S.C. § 101 and effectively overturn the Supreme Court's Mayo, Myriad, and Alice decisions.  The hearing featured testimony from former USPTO Directors Andrei Iancu and David Kappos, China IP expert Mark Cohen, biotech executives, patient advocates, and retail industry representatives, all addressing whether Congress should replace the judge-made "abstract idea" and "law of nature" exceptions with a set of narrow statutory exclusions. Chairman Thom Tillis (R-NC) and ranking member Adam Schiff (D-CA) both acknowledged the widespread confusion in current eligibility jurisprudence, with Tillis noting that the status quo "continues to be hopelessly confused" and expressing determination to move the bill forward to committee markup. The Bill has bipartisan support in the Senate, but it is unclear  how hard those in opposition would push if the bill started to move forward.

PERA was originally introduced back in 2019 as a draft proposal. It was later reintroduced as S.4734 in 2022 and has been refined through successive versions, with the current 2025 bill (S.1546) representing a more measured approach than earlier drafts while still fundamentally overhauling § 101. The 2019 proposal included explicit language stating that all judicially created exceptions were "hereby abrogated." Later versions achieve the same result more subtly by specifying that eligibility is determined "subject only to" the enumerated statutory exclusions. The 2022 version would have made isolated human genes patent-eligible, directly contradicting Myriad's core holding, but the 2025 bill narrows this by removing "isolated" from the human gene provision—meaning mere isolation of natural DNA wouldn't suffice for eligibility, though purified, modified, or engineered genes used in inventions would still qualify. Similarly, where the 2022 draft used the ambiguous term "non-technological" to define excluded business methods, the 2025 version asks whether the machine is "necessary to practically perform" the invention. Probably most importantly, the 2025 bill adds new guardrails against patenting superficial computerization of otherwise abstract ideas.