Part Ⅱ: Are the Federal Circuit's Recent Section 101 Decisions a 'Specific Improvement' in Patent Eligibility Law?

摘要

Editor's Note: This is the second of a two-part article. Part I, which ran in the March issue, discussed the Supreme Court precedent concerning software patents that pre-dated Mayo and Alice. It also described how Mayo and Alice re-defined the judicial test for assessing patent eligibility and reviewed three 2016 Federal Circuit decisions that, applying that test, have affirmed the eligibility of software inventions. This Part II discusses certain open questions that these cases pose for future eligibility analysis of software patents and contains some recommendations for addressing these open questions.