Heritage Foundation Report: Congress Should Reform Patent Eligibility Doctrine to Preserve the U.S. Innovation Economy
SUMMARY
The innovation industries face a judicially created doctrine that permits unbounded judicial decision making in dissecting claims and results in high rates of invalidations of patents. Congress should reassert the primacy of the statutory language it has enacted, reestablish that patent eligibility doctrine is only a limited threshold test as it has historically been applied under the patent statutes, and impose on courts express statutory limits that ensures the test for patent eligibility follows long-standing doctrinal practices in all of the patentability requirements. It is time for Congress to restore balance to a patent system that has historically secured the fruits of inventive labors with reliable and effective property rights in inventions and discoveries.
Read the report here.