A decision has been issued that will have a huge impact on software oriented and related patents. The Alice decision and Mayo decision has been used to invalidate existing patents and impede issuance of new patents in the area of software. Applications are down significantly - some think as much as 80% and challenges to software oriented patents have been successful in over 70% of the cases. This has been a disaster for small pro se inventors and for software innovators. As he usually does, Robert Sachs has written a cogent and elegant blog entry that is accessible at the address below: http://www.bilskiblog.com/blog/2016/09/mcro-preemption-matters-after-all-is-there-a-split-in-the-cafc.html.
The key to the new framing is that a claim that involves an abstract idea (almost anything) can stand if it is confined to new art for a full process and sequence that forces the devices that implement it (computers and the like) to address and resolve a particular subset of the abstract idea (a genus) in a manner that is not so general as to preclude alternative ways to achieve the same result or outcome by other processes or sequences. I'm not an attorney, but that is my best summary understanding of the decision. Comments to "set me straight" are welcome.
