Sponsors (4)
The bill clarifies and broadens patent eligibility—making it easier to patent many machine-implemented and engineered-biological inventions and speeding some court determinations—while narrowing or complicating protections for certain software, business-methods, and natural/unmodified biological subject matter, which increases the risk of broader patents, higher licensing costs, and litigation over borderline claims.
Researchers, inventors, tech workers, and small businesses gain clearer, more predictable patent-eligibility rules for computer- and machine-implemented claims, reducing uncertainty when drafting and prosecuting applications.
Inventors and investors in machine- or computer-dependent technologies are more likely to obtain patents (eligibility evaluated on the claimed invention as a whole, not discounted for conventional elements), encouraging investment and commercialization of combined innovations.
Biotech and pharmaceutical innovators keep protection for many engineered or modified biological inventions (including purified, enriched, isolated, or otherwise altered genes or natural materials), supporting development of therapeutics and processed-natural-material products.
Eliminating certain judicial exceptions and enabling broader patenting (especially for computer-implemented inventions) could lead to wider, stronger patents and higher licensing or compliance costs for businesses and consumers.
Allowing machine- or computer-assisted implementations while excluding 'substantially' economic or mental processes invites litigation over borderline claims (e.g., whether a computer is "necessary"), increasing legal uncertainty and defense costs.
Restricting courts from relying on §§102, 103, and 112 to inform eligibility shifts substantive patentability review into eligibility determinations, reducing judicial flexibility to weed out weak claims and increasing USPTO and court workloads (and the risk of low-quality patents).
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Broadens patent eligibility for useful inventions, removes judicial eligibility exceptions, and establishes specific statutory exclusions (pure math, pure mental processes, unmodified human genes/natural materials, and largely business/social processes).
Official title: Amend title 35, United States Code, to address matters relating to patent subject matter eligibility, and for other purposes.
Introduced May 1, 2025 by Thomas Roland Tillis · Last progress May 1, 2025
Rewrites federal patent-eligibility law to broadly allow patents on any useful process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter, or useful improvement, while eliminating all prior judge-created eligibility exceptions. It narrowly excepts several categories (pure math not claimed as an invention, purely mental processes, unmodified human genes and natural materials, and predominantly economic/financial/business/social/cultural/artistic processes) and clarifies that eligibility must be judged for the claimed invention as a whole without folding novelty, nonobviousness, or specification rules into the eligibility inquiry.