Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International
2014 United States Supreme Court case
Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International, 573 U.S. 208 (2014), was a 2014 United States Supreme Court decision about patent eligibility of business method patents. The issue in the case was whether certain patent claims for a computer-implemented, electronic escrow service covered abstract ideas, which would make the claims ineligible for patent protection. The patents were held to be invalid, because the claims were drawn to an abstract idea, and implementing those claims on a computer was not enough to transform that abstract idea into patentable subject matter.
Although the Alice opinion did not mention software as such, the case was widely considered as a decision on software patents or patents on software for business methods. Alice and the 2010 Supreme Court decision of Bilski v. Kappos, another case involving software for a business method (which also did not opine on software as such), were the most recent Supreme Court cases on the patent eligibility of software-related inventions since Diamond v. Diehr in 1981.
Background
Alice Corporation ("Alice") owned four patents on electronic methods and computer programs for financial-trading systems.
“Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International” enters the record as 2014 United States Supreme Court case. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Alice, Corp and Bank can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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