Whether the Federal Circuit's physical realm' test contravenes the Patent Act and Supreme Court precedent by categorically excluding otherwise patentable processes from patent eligibility

QUESTION PRESENTED An invention is patentable if it satisfies statutory criteria in the Patent Act and is not a judicially-excluded natural phenomenon, law of nature, or abstract idea. These judicial exceptions to statutory patent eligibility arise from this Court’s concern, since 1853, that allowing preemptive patents would inhibit innovation. Accordingly, patents claiming abstract ideas are patenteligible only if those claims include an inventive concept that offers “something more” than the abstract idea. Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Int'l, 573 US. 208, 217 (2014). The Federal Circuit has added a new requirement, not found in this Court’s precedent, that the claimed inventive concept must occur in the “physical realm.” The Federal Circuit held below that a process is “abstract” because the process, which must be performed by a computer, does not occur in the “physical realm.” The Federal Circuit therefore held the process patentineligible, despite finding that the process was inventive, novel, and nonobvious under the Patent Act in previous proceedings. The question presented is: Does the Federal Circuit’s “physical realm” test contravene the Patent Act and this Court’s precedent by categorically excluding otherwise patentable processes from patent eligibility?