The U.S. Supreme Court Issued a Decision on Abstract Ideas in Patents in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Intl.

In a unanimous decision on June 19, 2014 authored by Justice Thomas, the Supreme Court in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Intl. held that an abstract idea did not become patent-eligible simply by performing that idea on a computer. In doing so, the Court held that to convert an unpatentable abstract idea or natural law into a patent-eligible invention required application of that abstract idea or natural law in an inventive manner. Generically using a computer for such application was not inventive. This principle applied irrespective of whether the claims were method claims, system claims, or computer-readable media claims.