Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued an opinion in In Re: Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University, No. 20-1288 (March 25, 2021), affirming the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s assessment that Stanford’s Patent Application No. 13/486,982, covering statistical methods of predicting haplotype phases, is ineligible for protection. Using the Supreme Court’s two-step analysis to determine patent eligibility as set forth in Alice Corp. Pty. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 573 U.S. 208 (2014), both the Federal Circuit and the Board agreed Stanford’s patent was directed to abstract ideas in the form of mathematical concepts that did not include additional inventive material sufficient to transform the ideas into patent eligible subject matter.
Stanford’s patent application was directed to computerized statistical methods aimed at determining haplotype phase. A haplotype phase acts as an indication of the parent from whom a gene has been inherited. Stanford’s application addressed a method for accurately estimating haplotype phase based on genotype data obtained through sequencing an individual’s genome.
Considering the first step of Alice, the Federal Circuit concluded that Stanford’s claims directed to the use of mathematical calculations and statistical modeling were akin to mathematical algorithms for performing calculations, which have long been considered patent ineligible under 35 U.S.C. §101. Notwithstanding arguments from Stanford that the application included claims resulting in increased computational accuracy, among other things, the Court found that the claims were mere “generic steps of implementing and processing calculations with a regular computer,” which could not be rendered patent eligible subject matter even if they “yield[ed] different or better results.” Next, examining the second step of Alice, the Court further concluded that that claims could not be saved because they possessed no inventive concept that would warrant treating the use of the claimed algorithms and mathematic calculations as patent eligible. According to the Court, “the recited steps of receiving extracting and storing data amount to well-known, routine, and conventional steps taken when executing a mathematical algorithm on a computer.” Thus, largely concurring with the decision of the Board, the Federal Circuit agreed that Stanford’s application failed to claim a patentable method.