35 U.S.C. § 101. The statute thus recites four categories of patent-eligible subject matter: processes, machines, manufactures, and compositions of matter.

The term „process“ is ordinarily broad in meaning, at least in general lay usage. In 1952, at the time Congress amended § 101 to include „process,“ the ordinary meaning of the term was: „[a] procedure . . . [a] series of actions, motions, or operations definitely conducing to an end, whether voluntary or involuntary.“.¹⁾

A person may have “invented” a machine or a manufacture, which may include anything under the sun made by man, but it is not necessarily patentable under section 101 unless the conditions of the title are fulfilled.²⁾

This provision contains an important implicit exception: Laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas are not patentable.³⁾

The Supreme Court has held that the meaning of „process“ as used in § 101 is narrower than its ordinary meaning.⁴⁾

Specifically, the Court has held that a claim is not a patent-eligible „process“ if it claims „laws of nature, natural phenomena, [or] abstract ideas.“.⁵⁾

Such fundamental principles are „part of the storehouse of knowledge of all men . . . free to all men and reserved exclusively to none.“.⁶⁾

A principle, in the abstract, is a fundamental truth; an original cause; a motive; these cannot be patented, as no one can claim in either of them an exclusive right.⁷⁾

Phenomena of nature, though just discovered, mental processes, and abstract intellectual concepts are not patentable, as they are the basic tools of scientific and technological work.⁸⁾

→ Computer readable medium

A claimed process is surely patent-eligible under § 101 if: (1) it is tied to a particular machine or apparatus, or (2) it transforms a particular article into a different state or thing.⁹⁾ → Machine-or-transformation test

The claimed invention as a whole must be useful and accomplish a practical application. That is, it must produce a „useful, concrete and tangible result“.¹⁰⁾ → useful, concrete and tangible result

Art. 52 EPÜ → Patentierbare Erfindungen