In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 9-0 decision in Alice v. CLS Bank put an end to, or at least hampered, the prevalence of potentially “bad patents” being granted that covered abstract ideas, especially in the area of software.
At the heart of the landmark 2014 case was Alice Corporation’s claims that its patent for a financial transaction process using computers and electronic media was being infringed upon by CLS Bank, which had been using a similar process dating back to 2002. Central to the ruling was the idea that certain vague abstract ideas were patent-ineligible under Section 101 of Title 35, which governs all aspects of patent law in the United States.
