Patenting strategies post-Enfish

The US patent eligibility doctrine was upended by the Supreme Court’s Alice v CLS Bank case, which applied the two-step Mayo v Prometheus test to computer-related inventions. The first, or “ineligible concept”, step is to determine whether the claim at issue is directed to a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea. If it’s not, the claim is eligible under 35 USC §101. If the claim is directed to an ineligible concept, the second, or “inventive concept”, step is to determine whether an inventive concept exists that is sufficient to transform the claim into patent-eligible subject matter. If an inventive concept exists, the claim is eligible.