Patent Law

101 Clarification

By Gary Odom and Jordan Kuhn

An interoffice memo on examining claims for § 101 compliance issued to the USPTO examiner corps in mid-May.

Based on Supreme Court precedent and recent Federal Circuit decisions, the Office's guidance to examiners is that a § 101 process must (1) be tied to another statutory class (such as a particular apparatus) or (2) transform underlying subject matter (such as an article or materials) to a different state or thing. If neither of these requirements is met by the claim, the method is not a patent eligible process under § 101 and should be rejected as being directed to nonstatutory subject matter.

Full post as published by The Patent Prospector on July 02, 2008 (boomark / email).