Alice Corporation v. CLS Bank International (2013)
- Docket
- 13-298
- Decided
- 2013-01-01
Summary
Question: Are claims regarding computer-implemented inventions—including systems, machines, processes, and items of manufacture—patent-eligible subject matter? Conclusion: No. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the opinion for the unanimous Court. The Court held that patent law should not restrain abstract ideas that are the "building blocks of human ingenuity" and held all of Alice's claims ineligible for patent protection. Because using a third party to eliminate settlement risk is a fundamental and prevalent practice, it is essentially a building block of the modern economy. The Court held that Alice's claims did no more than require a generic computer to implement this abstract idea of intermediated settlement by performing generic computer functions, which is not enough to transform an abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention. Justice Sonia M. Sotomayor wrote a concurring opinion in which she argued that any claim that merely describes a method of doing business should not be patentable. In this case, Justice Sotomayor agreed that the method claims at issue pertained to an abstract idea. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Justice Stephen G. Breyer joined the concurrence.