USPTO Provides Guidelines On Patenting Software Related Inventions

On December 16, 2014, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) released revised Guidelines for its patent Examiners regarding patent subject matter eligibility (" Interim Eligibility Guidelines"). The guidelines take effect immediately, and supplement the Preliminary Guidelines that were issued June 25, 2014 in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International ("Alice").

The Interim Eligibility Guidelines specify that all claims directed to a "judicial exception" from patentable subject matter (i.e., a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea) are subject to the same two-step analysis for eligibility developed by the Supreme Court in Mayo v. Prometheus (the "Mayo test") and which was applied in Alice.