Question
In light of the Alice Corp decision by the Supreme Court, what should a startup know about what kinds/structure/wording/formatting/etc of claims are or are not likely to be approved? Generally, how do we know if our software product is just an "abstract idea" and cannot be patented?
Answers: 1 public & 0 private
Although the Alice Corp. decision is still being "tried out" at the Federal Circuit, some guidelines for determining whether your software product would be considered "patent-eligible" or not are the following:
1) does your software product attempt to capture a "fundamental economic concept" in a software application? If yes, it most probably would fail the Alice test;
2) does your software product simply take a well-known manual task and computerize it? If yes, it most probably would fail the Alice test;
3) does your software seek an entrepreneurial objective, e.g., increasing revenue, minimizing economic risk, structuring commercial transactions, rather than a technological improvement to computer operation? If yes, then it most likely will not pass the Alice test.
I hope this answers your question.
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