Findings

Congress finds the following: (1) As of the day before the date of enactment of this Act, patent eligibility jurisprudence interpreting section 101 of title 35, United States Code, requires significant modification and clarification. (2) For many years after the original enactment of section 101 of title 35, United States Code, the Supreme Court of the United States and other courts created judicial exceptions to the wording of that section, thereby rendering an increasing number of inventions ineligible for patent protection. (3) Efforts by judges of district courts and courts of appeals of the United States to apply the exceptions described in paragraph (2) to specific circumstances have led to extensive confusion and a lack of consistency— (A) throughout the judicial branch of the Federal Government and Federal agencies; and (B) among patent practitioners. (4) Many judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and of various district courts of the United States have explicitly expressed the need for more guidance with respect to the meaning of section 101 of title 35, United States Code, and many patent owners, and persons that engage with patent owners, complain that the interpretation of that section is extremely confusing and difficult to discern and apply with any confidence. (5) Under this Act, and the amendments made by this Act, the state of the law shall be as follows: (A) All judicial exceptions to patent eligibility are eliminated. (B) Any invention or discovery that can be claimed as a useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any useful improvement thereof, is eligible for patent protection, except as explicitly provided in section 101 of title 35, United States Code, as amended by this Act, as described in subparagraphs (D) and (E) of this paragraph. (C) Sections 102, 103, and 112 of title 35, United States Code, will continue to prescribe the requirements for obtaining a patent, but no such requirement will be used in determining patent eligibility. (D) The following inventions shall not be eligible for patent protection: (i) A mathematical formula that is not part of an invention that is in a category described in subparagraph (B). (ii) A mental process performed solely in the mind of a human being. (iii) An unmodified human gene, as that gene exists in the human body. (iv) An unmodified human gene that is isolated from the human body, but otherwise the same as that gene exists in the human body. (v) An unmodified natural material, as that material exists in nature. (vi) A process that is substantially economic, financial, business, social, cultural, or artistic. (E) Under the exception described in subparagraph (D)(vi)— (i) process claims drawn solely to the steps undertaken by human beings in methods of doing business, performing dance moves, offering marriage proposals, and the like shall not be eligible for patent coverage, and adding a non-essential reference to a computer by merely stating, for example, do it on a computer shall not establish such eligibility; and (ii) any process that cannot be practically performed without the use of a machine (including a computer) or manufacture shall be eligible for patent coverage.