Over the past decade, the cohort of court rulings collectively known as “patent subject matter eligibility” rules have significantly shrunk filings and approvals of patent applications and caused the premature demise of many previously enforceable bursiness patents.

Until Supreme Court pushed it into the forefront in the BILSKI decision, 35 USC 101 used to loom in the background of patent prosecution.  Since BILSKI, the notion of abstract ideas and natural phenomena–to be aligned with “ideas” (e.g., mathematic formula or natural relationships) has quickly crept into biotechnology patent prosecution and seriously crippled efforts to secure patent protection for biomedical discoveries, especially in the diagnostic area.