Is your invention of the type that, as a matter of public policy, should be excluded from patenting, regardless of the invention’s uniqueness or value? This is a question of subject matter eligibility, which many inventors and patent holders are finding they have to respond to when applying for or enforcing their patents. Inventions considered ineligible are those that are essentially laws of nature, natural phenomena, or abstract ideas, since these concepts are considered fundamental to life and patenting them would preempt their use on too broad a scale. It is not always easy, however, to distinguish between inventions that are ineligible for these reasons and those that are not.
For chemical engineers, plant operations often benefit from advanced data processing techniques for such functions as monitoring, safety, and control. Inventions that center around these techniques are often rejected as being attempts to claim abstract ideas and thereby failing to meet the eligibility requirement. This article describes how several recent cases have handled the question of eligibility.