Rewrites the legal rules for what kinds of inventions can be patented. It expressly excludes categories such as pure mathematical formulas, purely mental processes, unmodified human genes, and naturally occurring materials, and tells courts and patent offices how to apply the new eligibility standard. The law keeps existing rules on novelty, nonobviousness, and specification requirements in place, but says those rules should not be used to answer the basic question of whether a subject matter category is patent-eligible. It also preserves a court-created rule against obviousness-type double patenting and prevents adding trivial computer or machine steps from converting an otherwise excluded idea into a patentable invention.