New Patent Eligibility Bill Takes Aim at High Court Inaction (1)

Muddled case law around what ideas shouldn’t be eligible for patent protection would be clarified under a new bill that follows US Supreme Court inaction on a controversial intellectual property issue, according to Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.).

Mathematical formulas, mental processes, unmodified human genes, and processes that occur only in nature are among the types of inventions that wouldn’t be eligible under the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (S. 4734), which Tillis introduced Tuesday night. Patent eligibility determinations would also be made based on the patent as a whole, rather than by parsing certain claim elements, according to the legislation.

Attorneys ...