Supreme Court Sends Computer-Implemented Business Method Claims Down The Rabbit Hole

The US Supreme Court has maintained its solidarity with yet another 9-0 patent decision in Alice Corporation v. CLS Bank¹, holding that Alice's patent claims directed towards mitigation of settlement risk were patent-ineligible subject matter. The Court criticized the claims, finding that they merely required generic computer implementation of an abstract idea.

The representative claim was directed towards a method of mitigating risk and required four discrete steps: 1) creation of shadow credit and debit records; 2) obtaining a balance for the shadow records; 3) adjustment of shadow records when transactions requiring an exchange obligation occurred; and 4) instructing exchanges of credits or debits based on the adjustments. Additional claims were directed toward computer systems to carry out the described method and a computer readable medium containing program code to perform the described method. All claims were deemed patent-ineligible subject matter.