How do we know if our product is abstract and can't be patented?

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?

or

Answers: 1 public & 0 private

86bfd1d0e6
Patent Attorney

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.

Recent questions