Summary

Rewrites federal patent-eligibility law to eliminate judicially created exceptions and make any "useful" process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter, or useful improvement generally patentable, while listing specific categories that remain ineligible. It preserves novelty, nonobviousness, and written-description/definiteness requirements as separate substantive hurdles, adds a statutory definition of "useful," clarifies how courts must evaluate eligibility (claim as a whole, without relying on sections 102/103/112), and includes carve-outs and limits such as allowing eligibility when practical performance requires a machine and excluding mere computer pre/post-processing from rescuing ineligible subject matter.

• Replaces the current judicial-exception based test so most "useful" inventions are statutorily eligible for patents.
• Adds a statutory definition of "useful" requiring specific, practical utility from the view of a skilled person.
• Keeps novelty (102), nonobviousness (103), and disclosure (112) as separate hurdles but bars using them to decide eligibility.
• Enumerates explicit exclusions: certain mathematical formulas, purely mental processes, unmodified human genes, unmodified natural materials, and largely economic/business/social processes.
• Allows eligibility when practical performance requires a machine (including computers) or when natural materials are meaningfully altered/purified/used.
• Directs courts to assess eligibility based on the claim as a whole, without dissecting or relying on 102/103/112.
• Permits limited discovery in infringement suits where eligibility is disputed.
• Clarifies the Act does not change double-patenting law and prevents superficial computer steps from rescuing excluded subject matter.