Federal Circuit Inches Toward Clarity On “Patentability”

The Supreme Court confirmed in its 2010 Bilski decision that abstract ideas are not patentable, but left it to lower courts to clarify what an abstract idea is. A recent Federal Circuit decision, parsed here in an article from Jones Day attorneys, demonstrates just how difficult that’s going to be. The court denied Accenture’s claims for an insurance-management computer program, but with a strong dissent from Chief Judge Rader, who maintains that any claim can be stripped down and paraphrased “until at its core, something that could be characterized as an abstract idea is revealed.” Deciding what makes a claim abstract, Judge Rader says, “is reminiscent of the oenologists trying to describe a new wine.”