Patent Eligibility Restoration Act of 2025

Summary

Changes patent-eligibility law by removing the judicially created exceptions and replacing them with a statutory rule that broadly makes any useful process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter, or useful improvement eligible for patent protection, subject to a short list of explicit exclusions. It adds definitions (including a broadened definition of “process” and a statutory meaning of “useful”), directs courts to assess eligibility based on the whole claimed invention without importing novelty/obviousness/enablement considerations, and allows courts to decide eligibility early in litigation with limited discovery. The law explicitly excludes certain categories from eligibility: pure mathematical formulas standing alone, mental processes performed solely in the human mind, unmodified human genes and unmodified natural materials as they exist in nature, and processes that are substantially economic/financial/business/social/cultural/artistic (with rules to prevent simple computer recitations from making a purely human-conduct process eligible). It also preserves existing patentability doctrines like novelty, nonobviousness, and written-description as separate gates to patenting.

• Eliminates judicially created patent-eligibility exceptions and replaces them with a statutory standard making useful inventions eligible for patents.
• Creates explicit statutory exclusions: standalone math formulas, pure mental processes, unmodified human genes, unmodified natural materials, and processes that are substantially economic/financial/business/social/cultural/artistic.
• Defines “process” broadly and defines “useful” as having specific and practical utility to a person of ordinary skill in the art.
• Directs courts to evaluate eligibility based on the claimed invention as a whole and forbids importing novelty/obviousness/enablement (§§102, 103, 112) considerations into eligibility analysis.
• Permits courts to resolve eligibility early in litigation, with limited, eligibility-focused discovery when there are no genuine factual disputes.
• Clarifies that mere recitation of a computer or machine does not rescue a claim that is essentially a human-conduct process unless the machine is necessary to practically perform the invention.
• Treats modified, purified, enriched, isolated, or otherwise changed genes and natural materials as potentially patent-eligible rather than automatically ‘unmodified’ and ineligible.
• Preserves the doctrine of obviousness-type double patenting and leaves novelty, nonobviousness, and written-description/enablement as separate patentability gates.
• Will change examination and drafting practices by shifting how examiners and courts treat claim elements and by narrowing the routes for rejecting claims under §101.