Whether the lodestar for determining patent eligibility under this Court's two-step framework is whether the patent claims preempt basic technological or scientific building blocks, and whether a court must consider both functional claim language and corresponding structure when determining patent eligibility under § 101 and § 112(f)

Section 101 of the Patent Act provides that “any new and useful process, machine, manufacture or composition of matter” is eligible for a patent . This Court has added a judicial exception that excludes “laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas.” Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Int’l , 573 U.S. 208, 217 (2014). The Federal Circuit held Impact Engine’s patent claims for dynamically creating and distributing online ads are an unpatentable abstract idea. A different provision of the Patent Act, 35 U.S.C. § 112(f), authorizes a patent to claim “a specified function without the recital of structure,” in which case the claim must “be construed to cover the corresponding structure ” in the specification. When considering whether a subset of Impact Engine’s claims written in § 112(f) form are patent -eligible , the Federal Circuit analyzed the function without considering the structure. That analysis all but assure d the claim s will be viewed as abstract. The question s presented are : 1. Whether the lodestar for determining patent eligibility under this Court’s two -step framework is whether the patent claims preempt basic technological or scientific building blocks . 2. Whether, when a court is determining if an invention claimed in purely functional terms under § 112(f) is patent -eligible under § 101, it must consider not just the functional claim language but also the specific corresponding structure defining the patent claim’s scope under § 112(f).