Today (July 30th), the Patent Office released an 11 page “July 2015 Update” on patent-eligible subject matter (or not). (A copy of the update and appendices can be found at the end of this post.) Most of the “Update” focused on clarifying the December 2014 revised guidance. Also released were new examples 21-26–including ones modeled on Flook and Diehr. None of the new examples related to the life-sciences. Also released were an Appendix 2 that indexed all of the examples released since December 2014, and an Appendix 3, summarizing all of the case law discussed.
So if you are a life sciences person, you need only peruse the “Update.” It spends considerable space discussing how to apply the December 2014 Guidance, but the takeaway is that you need to rebut the natural product exception with a showing of markedly difference characteristics (2A) or else you fall into the dreaded “significantly more” circle of Hell called 2B. There is also some attempt to clarify the role of the “Streamlined Analysis” and preemption, that I don’t think clarified anything and that Examiners ignore anyway.
