In June 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International, et al., where it removed the presumption that software operating on standard hardware components could avoid being deemed an abstract idea. The Alice court articulated a two-part patent eligibility test for software inventions.

Step one, known as the “filter step,” determines whether the patent claims at issue are directed to a patent-ineligible concept, such as an abstract idea. If the claims are considered abstract, the inquiry moves on to step two, which tests whether the elements of the claims contain an inventive concept sufficient to transform the abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention.

Originally published in the November-December 2023 edition of the Intellectual Property & Technology Law Journal.