“In Alice Corp. Pty. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 573 U.S. 208 (2014)—a case about the patentability of computer- implemented business methods—this Court confirmed that inventions ‘improv[ing] the functioning of the computer itself’ or ‘effect[ing] an improvement in any other technology or technical field’ remain patent-eligible. Id. at 225-226. Lower courts have not followed that instruction. Petitioner’s patents claim a novel computer file system that significantly improved fundamental computer networking operations—an improvement in a ‘technical field.’ Yet the Federal Circuit, in a precedential decision, canceled Petitioner’s patents as being directed to a pure ‘abstract idea.’ Petitioner is not alone. Since Alice, the Federal Circuit has found, as a matter of law and without any guiding principles, the vast majority of issued patents in the computing arts patent-ineligible. The list of inventions that the Federal Circuit has deemed categorically ‘abstract’ has grown so large as to place a cloud of invalidity over all computer-based patents. Certiorari is needed to provide guiding principles for patent-eligibility in the computing arts, and to restore the critical incentive to innovate in this essential technological field.”
“The question presented is:”
“How should courts determine whether a patent for a computer-implemented invention is patent-eligible because it ‘improve[s] the functioning of the computer itself’ or ‘effect[s] an improvement in any other technology or technical field’ under Alice?”
