The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International, 573 U.S. 208 (2014), triggered a veritable tsunami of successful challenges to patent-eligibility and breathed  new life into a mostly dormant 35 U.S.C. §101. The last few years have seen the pendulum swinging back, with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upholding patent claims as eligible under Section 101 more frequently than in the years immediately post-Alice. Changes in the procedural landscape for eligibility challenges have also somewhat stemmed the tide of patents found ineligible under Section 101.

Still, until recently, an important question remained open: does the presumption of patent validity under 35 U.S.C. §282 also include or require a presumption that claims are patent-eligible under Section 101? On June 25, 2019, in Cellspin Soft v. Fitbit, 927 F.3d 1306, 1319 (Fed. Cir. 2019), the Federal Circuit addressed the issue in a unanimous and precedential decision, clarifying that issued U.S. patents should indeed be accorded a presumption of eligibility.

Background