by Dennis Crouch
Earlier this year, the Federal Circuit decided its first "do it on AI" case - holding that Recentive Analytics' inventions were ineligible. The key patents at issue focused on training machine learning models for specific applications (event scheduling and network maps).
Recentive has now petitioned the Supreme Court for writ of certiorari. Conventional wisdom is that a good certiorari petition needs to show the legal error below and also show why the case is important and timely. The petition follows this dual framing strategy: (1) a doctrinal claim that the Federal Circuit has abandoned preemption as the touchstone of patent eligibility; and (2) a policy argument tied to what I think of as the "new great game" and what the Trump Administration calls "Winning the AI Race." The case also arrives at the Supreme Court as the USPTO has begun to move aggressively toward limiting its use of eligibility in patent prosecution.
The petition particularly asks whether eligibility doctrine requires model-architecture improvements, whether it is enough to create a practical tool by applying machine learning to new data environments.
- Recentive Certiorari Petition (Oct 2025)
- Dennis Crouch, “Do it on AI” Claims Are Abstract Ideas, Patently-O (Apr. 18, 2025) (discussing the Federal Circuit’s ruling that generic AI use is an abstract idea).
- Ryan Abbott, Reflections on Recentive v. Fox: To Do or Not To Do It With AI?, Patently-O (Oct. 9, 2025) (guest post analyzing Recentive v. Fox and AI-patent eligibility).
- Dennis Crouch, Preemption Lost: The Federal Circuit’s Abandonment of Supreme Court Patent Eligibility Doctrine, Patently-O (Feb. 7, 2025) (examining how the Federal Circuit largely ignores the Supreme Court’s preemption doctrine).
- Dennis Crouch, USPTO AI Strategy, Patently-O (Jan. 14, 2025) (outlining the pre-Trump administration AI strategy).
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