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The article focuses on the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank and impacts patent examiners and patent applicants in various technology areas. It mentions study compares patent applications in the control group with the patent applications in three technology areas-business methods, bioinformatics, and software. It also mentions eligible subject matter in patent law is a threshold requirement of patentability.

The Supreme Court's 2013 decision in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics is an essential piece of the Court's recent quartet of patent eligibility decisions, which also includes Bilski v. Kappos, Mayo v. Prometheus, and Alice v. CLS Bank. Each of these decisions has significantly shaped the contours of patent eligibility under Section 101 of the Patent Act in ways that have been both applauded and criticized. The Myriad case, however, was significant beyond its impact on Section 101 jurisprudence. It was seen, and litigated, as a case impacting patient rights, access to healthcare, scientific freedom, and human dignity. In this article, I offer a close textual analysis of the Myriad decision and respond to both its critics and supporters. I then situate Myriad within the larger context of biotechnology patenting, the commercialization of academic research, and the U.S. healthcare system. In this regard, the failure of public institutions and governmental agencies to constrain the private exploitation of publicly-funded innovations contributed as much to the healthcare access disparities highlighted by the case as the overly broad protection afforded by the Patent and Trademark Office to genetic inventions. I conclude with observations about the ways that cases like Myriad exemplify the manner in which the common law evolves, particularly in areas of rapid technological change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

US Supreme Court decisions in Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories and Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics Inc. caused US and European law on what is patentable subject matter to diverge significantly. Both cases related to molecular tests and changed decades of patent practice. Whether the decisions adversely affect the development of molecular tests in the United States and Europe has been a matter of much speculation but limited empirical investigation. This interview-based study has three main findings. First, Myriad and Mayo have negatively affected the development of some molecular tests. Notably, half of the US university technology-transfer offices interviewed decided not to develop tests, and many other organizations have found the legal uncertainty following the cases problematic. Second, small "patent-precarious" organizations--those that rely heavily on patents for competitive advantages, such as technology-transfer offices--have been the most affected because patent protection is now often weaker and more difficult to obtain. Third, US-headquartered organizations have been more affected by 35 U.S.C. § 101 case law developments than European organizations, even though both types of organizations file for US patents. This Article refrains from advising law reform, however, because this study only focused on the adverse effects of the decisions and the positive effects remain unexamined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses forum shopping within the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by placing the problem in the broader context of forum shopping in other areas of law. Topics include how patent drafters are using creative drafting to gain more a favorable patent classification; patent forum shopping at the appellate level, and creation and the impact of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit; and Supreme Court case Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories on same.

With the judgement rendered on 21 May 2019 in a case opposing Thales andlNPI (i.e. the French Patent Office), the Paris Court of Appeal seems to adopt the famous Hitachi approach, which is favourable to the patentability of computer-implemented inventions [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines recent Federal Circuit cases concerning the factual inquiry underlying the Mayo/Alice patent subject matter eligibility framework. It mentions asserts that the Federal Circuit's decisions represent an overdue clarification of the uncertainty surrounding patent litigation that involves this framework. It also mentions guidelines for the application of an evidentiary principle in the adjudication of patent subject matter eligibility.

The article provides an overview of the intellectual property law in Indiana. Topics mentioned include constitutionality and sovereign immunity of inter partes review, the definition of inter partes review, the recovery of lost foreign profits, facts relating to patent eligibility test, and court decisions on various cases involving intellectual property law from October 1, 2017 to September 30, 2018.

In the last decade, the Supreme Court has reviewed cases involving subject matter eligibility four times. The result has been a significant level of confusion felt by both practitioners and patent examiners. The Supreme Court seemed determined to continue tackling the issue of subject matter eligibility in an effort to clarify the standard for patent eligibility, however in the last couple of terms the Supreme Court has denied certiorari on several patent cases that have appealed on the basis of subject matter eligibility. The lack of clarity on patent eligible subject matter has hit the biotechnology industry particularly hard. Given that all biotechnology innovation is derived from naturally existing substances, courts have been quick to hold such patents as a discovery rather than the result of man's ingenuity and therefore not deserving of a patent grant. Failure to understand and differentiate the underlying laws of nature and the technological advancements has led to wide scale rejections on biotechnological inventions, either during patent prosecution or in the courts when the patents are later challenged. This Article argues that the Court's lack of understanding of the natural sciences has led to the creation of precedents that have all but removed the potential for patent grants in the biotechnology industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author argues that the U.S. Congress should abolish the Supreme Court promulgated, non-statutory exceptions to 35 U.S.C. section 101 of the Patent Act. It mentions about the U.S. Supreme Court case Mayo Collaborative Sers. v. Prometheus Labs., Inc. in which the court held that claims directed to a method of giving a drug to a patient, measuring metabolites of that drug, deciding whether to increase or decrease the dosage of the drug, were not patent-eligible subject matter.

Diagnostic tests are often patented using broad method claims, which allow inventors to secure the greatest possible protection for their inventions. However, several recent Supreme Court and Federal Circuit cases invalidated broad diagnostic method claims under 35 U.S.C. § 101, holding that the claims were directed to unpatentable abstract ideas, natural laws, or natural phenomena. In light of these decisions, the continued patentability of diagnostic inventions has been called into question. However, this Note argues that these invalidations were partially due to the breadth of the claims at issue and that diagnostic inventions may still survive § 101 challenges if they are claimed narrowly using machine, manufacture, or composition of matter claims rather than or in addition to method claims. Additionally, this Note endorses Judge Timothy B. Dyk's proposal for allowing patenting of diagnostic inventions that use conventional laboratory steps to detect novel analytes so long as the claims are narrowly tailored and actually reduced to practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A decade ago, the patent-eligible subject matter requirement was defunct. Several recent Supreme Court decisions, however, have made eligibility the most important issue in many patent cases. To date, debates over the resurgent doctrine have focused mainly on its substance. Critics contend that the Supreme Court's case law makes patents too easy to invalidate and discourages innovation. Supporters emphasize that the Court's decisions help eradicate the overly broad patents often asserted by so-called patent trolls. Yet one important consequence of eligibility's revival has been procedural. Because district courts often view eligibility to present a pure question of law, they are--for the first time ever--invalidating patents on motions to dismiss, ending infringement cases before the costly discovery process begins. The test for eligibility adopted by the Supreme Court, however, compares the claimed invention to the technology that predated the patent. That comparison, this Article argues, often involves disputes of fact, which means that courts should be more cautious about deciding eligibility on the pleadings than they currently are. In two noteworthy decisions issued in early 2018, the Federal Circuit held that the question of patent eligibility does indeed have factual underpinnings, brushing aside precedent that seemed to treat eligibility as a purely legal matter. But these new decisions may go too far. By making it extremely easy for plaintiffs to create a factual dispute that prevents pre-trial adjudication, they threaten to nullify what this Article identifies as a key policy function of the eligibility requirement: providing a means for courts to quickly and cheaply dismiss infringement claims so plainly lacking merit that discovery is unwarranted. In addition to examining the legal-versus-factual nature of eligibility doctrine, the Article analyzes several other important questions about procedure in eligibility cases that the lower federal courts--including judges and panels of the Federal Circuit--have answered in wildly divergent ways. Those questions range from the role of claim construction in the eligibility analysis, to the relevance of the statutory presumption of patent validity, to whether courts should decide eligibility when a case can be terminated on another ground. By engaging these vexing issues, the Article sketches a procedural framework for resolving eligibility that would allow courts to quickly invalidate "bad" patents while reducing the danger they will erroneously invalidate a "good" patent on an inadequately developed record. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Patents Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) has decided that cells expanded in culture may be patent-eligible' in the US. Cultured cells were held to be different from cells in their natural environment. This comment compares the decisions to Myriad, challenges the assumption that isolated cells are patent-ineligible and highlights opportunities for European invention capture, patent drafting and prosecution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the role of courts in shaping patent law and policy in the U.S. Topics discussed include enactment of Patent Act of 1952 for governing patents in the country; guidance of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to help examiners and applicants who struggle with patent issues; and the U.S. Supreme Court cases Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Int'l and Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories on patentability.

In the last decade, the Supreme Court has reviewed cases involving subject matter eligibility four times. The result has been a significant level of confusion felt by both practitioners and patent examiners. The Supreme Court seemed determined to continue tackling the issue of subject matter eligibility in an effort to clarify the standard for patent eligibility, however in the last couple of terms the Supreme Court has denied certiorari on several patent cases that have appealed on the basis of subject matter eligibility. The lack of clarity on patent eligible subject matter has hit the biotechnology industry particularly hard. Given that all biotechnology innovation is derived from naturally existing substances, courts have been quick to hold such patents as a discovery rather than the result of man's ingenuity and therefore not deserving of a patent grant. Failure to understand and differentiate the underlying laws of nature and the technological advancements has led to wide scale rejections on biotechnological inventions, either during patent prosecution or in the courts when the patents are later challenged. This Article argues that the Court's lack of understanding of the natural sciences has led to the creation of precedents that have all but removed the potential for patent grants in the biotechnology industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the U.S. Supreme Court case Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International which deals with the issue of patent eligibility.

The Supreme Court has recently reinvigorated the law of patentable subject matter. But beneath the headlines proclaiming the return of limits to patent eligibility, a more profound shift has taken place: central claiming is reborn. The Court's eligibility cases are significant outliers compared to today's run-of-the-mill patent law because claim language plays little role in their analyses. In our modern peripheral claiming system, the claim language is the near exclusive guide to the patent's boundaries. But in its earliest days, our patent system pursued a central claiming approach, in which the inventor's actual work determined the patent's scope. The Court's eligibility cases focus on the inventor's actual contribution to the field, precisely as a central claiming inquiry would. And they can be better understood once this return to central claiming is revealed. Indeed, the shift to central claiming points the way toward a principled approach to eligibility. The eligibility requirement aims to prevent patents from covering certain kinds of prohibited subject matter: laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas. But every invention, at some level of abstraction, applies ineligible subject matter. In a peripheral claiming system, this levels-of-abstraction problem could lead courts to simply deem all claims eligible (as occurred for nearly thirty years) or all claims ineligible (as some fear will happen today). Central claiming offers a solution by focusing on what the inventor added to the storehouse of knowledge. It is that contribution, rather than some abstraction from the claim language, that guides the eligibility analysis. There are several additional payoffs to uncovering the Court's return to central claiming. It helps make sense of the Court's eligibility jurisprudence, revealing two distinct threads in the cases--one focusing on ineligible contributions and another on implausible contributions--with distinct (though uneasy) normative foundations. More robust use of central claiming might also improve other areas of patent law. As a proof of concept, I show that it could provide a better approach to the exhaustion trigger, improve the law of divided infringement, and rehabilitate the written description requirement. These examples illustrate the potential of the central claiming renaissance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analysis the scope of patent eligibility of diagnostic tests in the U.S. focusing on Ariosa v. Sequenom and Mayo Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus Labs., Inc. court case. Topics discussed include issues of patent law and medical innovation; analysis of Ariosa v. Sequenom and its implications for decisions on the patent eligibility of diagnostic tests; and analysis of current patent subject-matter eligibility test by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

One aspect of Justice Stephen Breyer's discomfort with patents, as expressed in his opinion for the Supreme Court in Mayo v. Prometheus and his dissent from the order dismissing certiorari in LabCorp v. Metabolite, is strikingly similar to one of his critiques of copyright law in The Uneasy Case for Copyright, a well-known article he wrote as Professor Breyer more than forty-five years ago. In The Uneasy Case, Breyer argued that the burdens on duplication of technical articles imposed by copyright law restrict the flow of information and prevent scientists from enjoying spillover benefits of published research. His patent opinions on the Supreme Court, too, talk of diminished access to information resulting from intellectual property protection. In this Article, I contend that the parallel that Justice Breyer implicitly draws between the harms of copyright and patent is a questionable one. In particular, Justice Breyer's opinions on patentable subject matter do not address the notion that inducement of disclosure and dissemination of information is one of the very purposes of patent law, nor the idea that there are many noninfringing uses of information contained in patents. I argue that these omissions may provide an insight into Justice Breyer's patent law jurisprudence?particularly, the recent reinvigoration of limits on patentable subject matter in his opinion for the Court in Mayo. To be sure, Justice Breyer's position can be defended. For even though patent law does not generally place barriers on access to information, claims like those at issue in Mayo and LabCorp may create narrow, subtle informationflow problems through recitation of mental steps at the point of the invention's novelty. I argue, however, that these problems can be solved by applying correspondingly narrow rules of novelty or claim construction to invalidate such patents or to limit their scope, making resort to the overbroad rule announced in Mayo unnecessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc. regarding the development of the patent eligibility doctrine. It mentions that Supreme Court's policy objectives for the recent reinvigoration of the patent eligibility doctrine with the subject matter eligibility threatens the availability of patent protection. It also mentions that availability of meaningful patent protection.

The article reports the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case 'Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International' in which the court guided the administrative agencies such as U.S. Patent and Trademark Office over software's patent eligibility.

The Federal Circuit's patent law decisions in 2015 reflected several notable trends. The court decided many novel questions of statutory interpretation, encountered its first round of appeals from the new post-grant Patent Office Proceedings, and continued to wrestle with difficult questions regarding patent-eligibility. Several decisions began implementing the Supreme Court's new directives regarding claim construction, indefiniteness, attorney fees, and inducement. This Article collects and summarizes the Federal Circuit's 2015 patent decisions and analyzes what many of them mean for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California's ruling in the patent infringement case McRO Inc. v. Bandai Namco Games America Inc. (McRO), and it mentions how the court in the McRO case sought to clarify the patentable subject matter (patentability) test that was established by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2014 patent litigation matter Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Int'l. McRO's patents for 3-D animation techniques and characters are also examined.

Imagine you invented a way to perform mathematical calculations all over the world simultaneously. Now, imagine that you cannot patent your invention because it was compared to, and found to contain, the same idea as an abacus. This scenario was the outcome of Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International. In coming to its decision in Alice, the U.S. Supreme Court adopted a two-part test that it had previously utilized to analyze the patentability of laws of nature to determine whether the patent at issue met the subject matter patentability standards of § 101 of the Patent Act. Determining the claim contained an abstract idea, the Court then addressed whether the invention was a patentable application and found it was not because "generic" computer implementation did not add "significantly more" to the underlying idea. Since Alice, courts have invalidated a number of patents for failing to meet this criteria--arguably turning from the plain meaning of the Patent Act and congressional intent. Utilizing the Alice framework, courts have dismissed patent infringement claims in the pleading stages upon labeling them as abstract and citing reasoning as well as utilizing terminology that is more indicative of a § 102 or § 103 Patent Act analysis. While an argument can be made that proactively dismissing some claims in the pleading stages could reduce the prevalence of patent trolls and improve the efficiency of the patent process, this Note argues that the widespread proclivity of courts to invalidate patents under § 101 by utilizing language indicative of § 102 and § 103 analysis robs patent holders of the ability to have their claims analyzed under proper standards and injects subjective and uncertain criteria into the patent infringement analysis that could be avoided by implementing other analytical methods. As a remedy to the inclusion of § 102 and § 103 factors in the subject matter patentability analysis, this Note advocates that a substantial increase in speed or efficiency generated by an invention should be taken into account in determining if the invention adds "significantly more" to the idea. This would create a tangible bright-line test that would allow the claim to move forward and be analyzed under more suitable Patent Act sections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the primary purpose of patent laws in the U.S. Topics discussed include the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the case 'Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International' in which the court held that the simple ideas are not patentable simply because they are done on a computer; impact of the decision on the non-practicing entities; and laws related to software and business method patents.

In 2006, a team of scientists discovered a method to create pluripotent stem cells--cells that have the potential to become almost any other type of cell in the human body--by inserting specific genes into a skin cell. The resulting cells were called induced pluripotent stem cells ("iPS cells"). The ability to manufacture stem cells could eventually eliminate the need to harvest stem cells from embryos, thereby rendering the embryonic stem cell debate irrelevant. Should a patent claim directed toward an iPS cell-related technology be challenged in the future, the absence of a bright-line test for patentable subject matter could present challenges to the presiding court. This Note proposes two new standards by which courts should evaluate whether products of nature and processes in the life sciences are patentable subject matter and, applying those standards, concludes that sufficiently narrow claims directed to iPS cells and preparation methods would likely be upheld as patentable subject matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews recent decisions on patent-eligibility from the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Federal Circuit to demonstrate the obstacles to patenting diagnostic methods under emerging law.

The article discusses whether computer software and business methods can be legally patented in the U.S. as of 2015, and it mentions the American Supreme Court's (USSC's) ruling in the case Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International which deals with patent claims involving a computer-implemented escrow service. A two-part court test for determining whether legal claims are directed to a patent-ineligible concept is examined, along with USSC jurisprudence and patent prosecution in the country.

The article discusses the inter partes review (IPR) alternative to U.S. federal litigation in relation to patentability claims and the efforts to ensure effective patent litigation through the use of a U.S. congressional estoppel provision as of 2015. The U.S. Congress' intent for IPR is addressed, along with the nullification of invalid patents and IPR under America's Leahy Smith America Invents Act. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and America's federal courts are also examined.

The authors argue that the European Patent Office's Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBoA) should be mindful that its mandate is to grant or refuse patents in conjunction with the interests of society at large, rather than the preferences of various patent applicants. Several patent eligibility legal cases at the EBoA involving transgenic plants, plant bioscience, and the State of Israel are mentioned. The European Patent Convention is examined, along with broccoli- and tomato-related lawsuits.

The article discusses the patent eligibility of computer-implemented inventions and the state of an abstract idea exception in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the patent law case Bilski v. Kappos, and it mentions the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's rulings on patent subject matter eligibility in several cases involving the Ultramercial Inc. Internet advertising company's business method patent for providing free media content. U.S. patent statutes are examined.

The article offer information on the judicial decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics Inc., in which the Court addressed the patentability issues related to human genes under the Patent Act of 1952. Topics discussed include the legal suit against the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) related to genetic testing services, laws for analysis of DNA sequences, and Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories Inc. case.

The article reports on the Australia Federal Court's decision in case Essendon Football Club v. Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority and D 'Arcy v. Myriad Genetics Inc. that involved patent issues such as patentability of methods of medical treatments.

The article discusses the ethical dilemmas that arise from genetic manipulation and gene patents and the concerns about how the role of genetic manipulation could change the nature and norms of prenatal testing and mental illness. It mentions that the decision of the Supreme Court in the case Association of Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics regarding the patentability of non-naturally occurring material.

The article analyzes the current law concerning patentable subject matter under section 101 of the United States Patent Act in relation to the U.S. Supreme Court decisions in Ass'n for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc. and Mayo Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus Labs., Inc. It provides an overview of patent law and examines the impact of the decisions on biotechnology companies. It also addresses the requirements for patentable subject matter under section 101.

The article looks at a framework for patentability of building block inventions in unpredictable fields objectively without reliance on the utility requirement in the U.S. Topics discussed include role of patent reform to making hard obtaining low quality patents; ways to raise substantive standards of patentability; and the impact of the foresight bias in patent denial regardless of the invention's technical merit.

Standing to challenge patent validity depends not only on factual assessments about the risk of patent enforcement, but also on legal judgments about the limits of judicial power under Article III of the Constitution, the specific causes of action granted by Congress through its Article I powers, and the degree of Article II executive branch power exercised in enforcing patents. Consumer suits show the importance of the legislative power, for Congress has created two causes of action that differ dramatically in their ability to provide consumers with an effective means for challenging patents. Competitor suits show the importance of Article II considerations. Because patents are enforced largely by private parties, courts should be more willing to grant standing to plaintiffs challenging the validity of patents than to plaintiffs challenging the validity of statutes or regulations that can be enforced only by governmental actors in the executive branch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses patent protection for inventions relating to "risk" in the U.S., focusing on business method patents and risk assessment in America, as well as several rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court and the nation's Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Patentability is addressed in relation to Section 101 of the U.S. Patents Act. Software patents and an American patent eligibility case involving the Australian financial instruments firm Alice Corp Pty. Ltd. are examined.

Although many people disagree about whether various types of subject matter (e.g., human genes, diagnostic tests, or business methods) are or should be patentable, they ostensibly agree on the overarching framework within which the issue is analyzed. Almost everyone in legal debates--in courts and in the scholarly literature--talks about patentable subject matter ("PSM") in the consequentialist terms of promoting innovation and maximizing utilitarian benefits while minimizing utilitarian costs. A solution to PSM debates is thus understood to involve merely the collection of better data and more empirical evidence to answer the utilitarian-economic question. This Article challenges this widely shared premise. The ostensible consensus that PSM law is about answering an agreed-upon utilitarian-economic question is an illusory one. In reality, debates about PSM law are not just about differences in empirical intuitions over economic costs and benefits; they are more importantly about differences in moral values, as well as about the relative weight of moral concerns vis-à-vis utilitarian concerns in patent law. Better data and more evidence will not resolve what is in reality a debate over first- and second-order normative commitments. Without candidly acknowledging and addressing the value differences that underlie PSM debates, the law in this area will remain an intractable mess. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1970s and early 1980s, the U.S. Supreme Court issued several landmark decisions establishing the contours of patent eligibility-a judicially created doctrine that serves as a gatekeeper to prevent the patenting of subject matter deemed so fundamental as to be better left unpatented. Over the course of the next twenty-five years, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit oversaw a progressive expansion in the scope of subject matter deemed patent eligible, highlighted by the adoption in the 1990s of a "useful, concrete, and tangible" test for patent eligibility, which for all practical purposes seemed to subsume the patent eligibility inquiry with the requirement of utility. However, in 2006 the Supreme Court actively reengaged the doctrine, and since that time the Court has granted certiorari in five patent eligibility cases, resulting in four decisions (the first case was dismissed after oral argument). In every case in which the Court reached a decision, all of the patent claims at issue were ruled invalid for covering patent-ineligible subject matter. Unfortunately, these decisions provide little guidance for the lower courts and the Patent Office with respect to the criteria to be applied in assessing patent eligibility--and little coherent insight into exactly what the Court is trying to accomplish. This Essay identifies some of the critical open questions that have been raised by the Supreme Court's reinvigoration of patent eligibility, and it reviews some of the early efforts by lower courts to apply the heightened standard in a manner that maintains adequate incentives for innovation while addressing the legitimate policy concerns underlying the Supreme Court's current obsession with the doctrine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analytical framework being used to assess the patent eligibility of software and computer-related inventions is fraught with errors, or bugs, in the system. A bug in a schema, or framework, in computer science may cause the system or software to produce unexpected results or shut down altogether. Similarly, errors in the patent eligibility framework are causing unexpected results, as well as calls to shut down patent eligibility for software and computer-related inventions. There are two general schemas that are shaping current discussions about software and computer-related invention patents--that software patents are generally bad (the bad patent schema) and that software patent holders are problematic (the troll schema). Because these frameworks were created and are maintained through a series of cognitive biases, they suffer from a variety of bugs. A larger flaw in the system, however, is that using these two schemas to frame the issue of patent eligibility for software and computer-related inventions misses the underlying question that is at the heart of the analysis--what is an unpatentable "abstract idea." To improve the present debate about the patent eligibility for these inventions, it is therefore critical that the software patent system be debugged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]