At first glance, the development of Section 101 jurisprudence appears chaotic. The Supreme Court captured several different kinds of problems in Alice and its earlier patentable-subject-matter opinions, and the Federal Circuit’s post-Alice approach has multiplied the problem by tangling several different legal threads in a way that has not so far resulted in clear, consistent statements of law. In this article, we attempt to describe and characterize the primary threads of the current view of Section 101, as illustrated in appellate opinions to date.

View the Sept 2017 Digest on Federal Circuit Jurisprudence Concerning the “Abstract Idea” Exception to 35 U.S.C. § 101