Insight on U.S. Subject-Matter Eligibility

By: Michelle K. Holoubek, Todd M. Hopfinger, and Naveed S. Hasan

In 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Federal Circuit) decided two cases¹ involving the subject matter eligibility of bioinformatics patent applications, U.S. Patent Appl. No. 13/486,982 (‘982 application) and U.S. Patent Appl. No. 13/445,925 (‘925 Application), both owned by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University (Stanford cases).

While these decisions focus on bioinformatics patent applications, they may also apply to patent applications in other technical fields, including data analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

1 In Re Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University, No. 20-1288 (Fed. Cir. 2021); In Re Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University, No. 20-1012 (Fed. Cir. 2021).