Abstract
IIC (2014) 45:865—867 DOI l0.1007/$40319-014-0285-9 EDITORIAL The Inventive Concept in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l Dan L. Burk Published online: 25 November 2014 © Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Munich 2014 The recent decision of the United States Supreme Court in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank1 is the latest and perhaps concluding opinion in a line of cases stretching back into the 1970s, attempting to define the parameters of patentable subject matter. The majority of these cases address process or method patents; nearly all of these cases involve computer software.2 But in its Alice Corp. opinion, the Supreme Court offers in the context of American patent law a construction of patentable subject matter that, on careful review, may seem surprisingly familiar to scholars and practitioners versed in European patent law. The explicit categories of patentable subject matter set forth in Sec. l0l of the American patent statute include processes, machines, articles of manufacture, and compositions of matter.3 The Supreme Court has interpreted this list broadly, to include “anything under the sun” made by humans,4 and this broad reading includes categories such as business methods that have been seen as problematic in other jurisdictions.5 But this reading also implies that subject matter not made by humans, such as natural products or natural principles, is excluded from patent eligibility, and the Court has additionally read the section as excluding certain other inchoate subject matter, such as abstract ideas or mental processes. 1 134 S.Ct. 2347 (2014). See this issue of IIC at doi:10.1007/s403l9-014-0274-z. 2 See Dan L. Burk, “The Curious Incident of the Supreme Court in Myriad Genetics”, 90 N otre Dame L. Rev. (forthcoming 2014). 3 35 U.S.C. § 101 (2012). 4 Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 U.S. 303, 309 (1980). 5 Bilski v. Kappas, 130 S.Ct. 3218 (2010). D. L. Burk (E) Chancellor’s Professor of Law University of California, Irvine, USA e-mail: dburk@uci.edu @ Springer
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