Last spring, in the much publicized and much criticized case, CLS Bank International v. Alice,1 the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit set out to resolve how to apply the standard of patentable subject matter to claims that were directed to certain methods for conducting business, and computer-readable media and systems that implement these methods.
However, rather than providing clarity, the Federal Circuit introduced more uncertainty into what was already a murky area of patent law, rendering five separate opinions, none of which were signed by a majority of judges. When read is combination, the five opinions suggest that inventors and practitioners who counsel them should be prepared for there to be a hurdle of increased height with respect to the patent eligibility requirement of the patent law.
