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ARTICLE · 09 OCTOBER 2025

New Eyes On AI?

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I'm pleasantly surprised by the decision in Ex parte Desjardins, Appeal 2024-000567, Application No. 16/319,040 (U.S. PTO Appeals Review Panel Sept. 26, 2025). I'll be watching closely to see how this decision is integrated into the USPTO's existing §101 guidance.

United StatesIntellectual Property
Christine McCarthy
Christine McCarthy
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I'm pleasantly surprised by the decision in Ex parte Desjardins, Appeal 2024-000567, Application No. 16/319,040 (U.S. PTO Appeals Review Panel Sept. 26, 2025). I'll be watching closely to see how this decision is integrated into the USPTO's existing §101 guidance.

Although it's often said that bad facts make bad law, independent claim 1 here looks more like a carefully constructed test case — one aimed squarely at probing patent subject matter eligibility in the context of training machine learning models. The Appeals Review Panel vacated the PTAB's § 101 rejection, reasoning that the claims recited an improvement in how the model itself operates. The panel left intact, however, the PTAB's §103 rejection.

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