====== Inventions Patentable ====== **35 U.S.C. § 101 ** Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title. 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.".((United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, 2007-1130; WEBSTER'S NEW INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 1972 (2d ed. 1952) )) 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.((House Report accompanying the 1952 bill)) This provision contains an important implicit exception: Laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas are not patentable.((SUPREME COURT, Decision of June 19, 2014 - ALICE CORPORATION PTY. LTD. v. CLS BANK )) ==== Process ==== The Supreme Court has held that the meaning of "process" as used in § 101 is narrower than its ordinary meaning.((United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, 2007-1130; with further references)) 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.".((United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, 2007-1130; with further references)) Such fundamental principles are "part of the storehouse of knowledge of all men . . . free to all men and reserved exclusively to none.".((United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, 2007-1130; with further references)) 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.((United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, 2007-1130; with further references)) 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.((United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, 2007-1130; with further references)) ==== Software ==== -> [[Computer readable medium]] ==== Machine-or-transformation test ==== 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.((United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, 2007-1130; with further references)) -> [[Machine-or-transformation test]] ==== Useful, concrete and tangible result ==== 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".((Interim Guidelines for Examination of Patent Applications for Patent Subject Matter Eligibility)) -> [[useful, concrete and tangible result]] ===== siehe auch ===== Art. 52 EPÜ -> [[EP:Patentierbare Erfindungen]]