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A Great Invisible Crashing: The Rise And Fall Of Patent Eligibility Through Mayo V. Prometheus, Scott Pierce

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Title 35 of the United States Code at Section 101 states that “[w]hoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.” Despite the apparent simplicity of the statute and its predecessors, the boundaries of patent eligibility dictated by the term “process” and the term “art” that it replaced, along with the terms “machine,” “manufacture” and “composition of matter,” have become increasingly uncertain over the course of the last two-hundred years. Recently, the lack …