USPTO Updates Guidance On Subject Matter Eligibility

[For background, see our prior posts on July 2, 2014, August 5, 2014, December 18, 2014, and March 23, 2015.]

On July 30, 2015, the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) published an update to its 2014 Interim Guidance on Subject Matter Eligibility (2014 IEG) published on December 16, 2014.¹ Comments to the 2014 IEG were solicited from the public, and the update purports to respond to six major themes from the public comments, including

• requests for additional examples, particularly for claims directed to abstract ideas and laws of nature;
• further explanation of the markedly different characteristics (MDC) analysis;
• further information regarding how examiners identify abstract ideas;