Intellectual property lawLesson 4 of 4 in the course Patent Basics

Patent Eligibility: Statutory Categories, Abstract Ideas, Software, and DNA

5 flashcards · 5 quiz questions · 5 match pairs · 4 fill-in sentences · English

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Summary

Patent law does not protect every valuable thought or discovery. It identifies particular kinds of inventions that may qualify when they also satisfy requirements such as novelty, non-obviousness, and usefulness.

Under Section 101 of Title 35 of the United States Code, a person who invents or discovers a new, non-obvious, and useful machine, manufacture, process, or composition of matter—or an improvement of one of these—may seek a patent.

All flashcards

Section 101 categories
Machines, manufactures, processes, and compositions of matter are broad categories of potentially patentable inventions.
Gottschalk v. Benson
The Court rejected a claim to a mathematical algorithm itself, but did not rule out all software patents.
Parker v. Flook
A specific field of use did not make an algorithm patentable when the application lacked an inventive contribution.
Alice v. CLS Bank
Putting a familiar human activity on a computer does not, by itself, make it patentable.
Myriad decision on natural DNA
Naturally occurring DNA does not become patentable merely because it has been isolated.

Quiz questions

  1. What did the Supreme Court say about the machine-or-transformation test in Bilski v. Kappos?Answer: It was a useful guide, but not the only possible test.
  2. Why did the claim in Parker v. Flook fail, despite applying an algorithm to setting an industrial alarm?Answer: The application did not add an inventive contribution to the algorithm.
  3. What feature supported eligibility in Diamond v. Diehr?Answer: The process used calculations to control rubber curing and transform the material.
  4. What did Alice v. CLS Bank establish about using a computer to carry out an escrow arrangement?Answer: Computerizing the familiar activity, by itself, did not make it patentable.
  5. Under the Supreme Court's Myriad decision, which statement about naturally occurring DNA is correct?Answer: Isolating it does not make it patentable; synthetic cDNA may be eligible.

Based on Introduction to Intellectual Property by David Kline, David Kappos (OpenStax), licensed CC BY 4.0. Adapted into a summary, flashcards and quizzes.

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