The Federal Circuit’s list of abstract ideas

As promised yesterday, here’s a pretty exhaustive list of abstract ideas found by the Fed. Cir. post Alice (and a few interesting legal points on step one). I don’t list duplicates. For example, I don’t list all of the variations of abstract ideas that fall under Electric Power Group. Perhaps I’ll save that for another post. Also, some of the cases cited are nonprecedential.

So, if you’re trying to invalidate a patent under 35 U.S.C. § 101 for lack of patent eligible subject matter at a district court or the Fed. Cir., you first analogize the challenged claim to at least one of the cases listed. Then, all you need to do is argue that what remains in the claim are functional elements or merely constitute additional details directed to the abstract idea itself and that there’s no technological improvement. That’s pretty much it.

On the flip side, if you’re drafting a patent application and your claims can be summarized as belonging on this list, make sure you have some claims with additional, very significant limitations tying those claims to, for example, improvements to the computer’s functionality and that those additional limitations can’t be considered to simply be part of the abstract idea. Otherwise, you may get a patent out of the USPTO to only have it struck down by the Fed. Cir.