No More Business Method Patents

The USPTO is no longer allowing business method patents.

In 2010, the Supreme Court denied patent protection for a system for processing how "commodities buyers and sellers in the energy market can protect, or hedge, against the risk of price changes".  Business method patents are no longer eligible under the United States Patent Act, 35 U. S. C. §101.

Purely abstract ideas such as business methods are not patentable.

Read the full decision
Bilski v. Kappos, 561 U.S. 593 (2010) 
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-964.pdf

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The Manual of Patent Examining Procedure 2106 has been updated to include guidance on patent subject matter eligibility.  

  I. TWO CRITERIA FOR SUBJECT MATTER ELIGIBILITY

First, the claimed invention must be to one of the four statutory categories. 35 U.S.C. 101 defines the four categories of invention that Congress deemed to be the appropriate subject matter of a patent: processes, machines, manufactures and compositions of matter. The latter three categories define "things" or "products" while the first category defines "actions" (i.e., inventions that consist of a series of steps or acts to be performed). See 35 U.S.C. 100(b) ("The term ‘process’ means process, art, or method, and includes a new use of a known process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter, or material."). See MPEP § 2106.03 for detailed information on the four categories.

Second, the claimed invention also must qualify as patent-eligible subject matter, i.e., the claim must not be directed to a judicial exception unless the claim as a whole includes additional limitations amounting to significantly more than the exception. The judicial exceptions (also called "judicially recognized exceptions" or simply "exceptions") are subject matter that the courts have found to be outside of, or exceptions to, the four statutory categories of invention, and are limited to abstract ideas, laws of nature and natural phenomena (including products of nature). Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Int'l, 573 U.S. 208, 216, 110 USPQ2d 1976, 1980 (2014) (citing Ass'n for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., 569 U.S. 576, 589, 106 USPQ2d 1972, 1979 (2013). See MPEP § 2106.04 for detailed information on the judicial exceptions.

The Federal Circuit plurality opinion's four step test in Alice is also noteworthy: 

1. determine whether the claimed invention fits within one of the four classes in the statute: process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter;  

2. determine whether the claim poses a risk of "preempting an abstract idea"; 

3. identify the idea supposedly at risk of preemption by defining "whatever fundamental concept appears wrapped up in the claim"; 

4. in a final step called "inventive concept" analysis, determine whether there is genuine, human contribution to the claimed subject matter. The "balance of the claim," or the human contribution, must "contain additional substantive limitations that narrow, confine, or otherwise tie down the claim so that, in practical terms, it does not cover the full abstract idea itself."  

Steps 2-4 of the Federal Circuit plurality opinion may explain the second MPEP criteria.