In reaching its conclusion, the Federal Circuit highlighted several important points regarding the subject matter eligibility analysis, in particular regarding whether a claim is directed to an abstract idea (Step 2A).

Fourth, the court stated that an invention's ability to run on a general purpose computer does not automatically doom the claim.

The court specifically noted that some improvements in computer-related technology, such as chip architecture or an LED display, when appropriately claimed, are undoubtedly not abstract.

To make the determination of whether these claims are directed to an improvement in existing computer technology, the court looked to the teachings of the specification.

The court then found that the additional elements of performing these functions using a telephone unit and a server did not add significantly more to the abstract idea because they were well-understood, routine, conventional activities (Step 2B).

This memorandum provides a discussion of two of the recent decisions identifying eligible subject matter, namely McRO, Inc. dba Planet Blue v. Bandai Namco Games America Inc., 120 USPQ2d 1091 (Fed. Cir. 2016) and BASCOM Global Internet Services v. AT&T Mobility LLC, 827 F .3d 1341 (Fed. Cir. 2016).

As explained in the specification, human artists did not use the claimed rules, and instead relied on subjective determinations to set the morph weights and manipulate the animated face to match pronounced phonemes.

In contrast, the court in Affinity Labs ofTX v. DirecTVrelied on the specification's failure to provide details regarding the manner in which the invention accomplished the alleged improvement when holding the claimed methods of delivering broadcast content to cellphones directed to an abstract idea.

The BASCOM court agreed that the additional elements were generic computer, network, and Internet components that did not amount to significantly more when considered individually, but explained that the district court erred by failing to recognize that when combined, an inventive concept may be found in the non-conventional and non-generic arrangement of the additional elements, i.e., the installation of a filtering tool at a specific location, remote from the end-users, with customizable filtering features specific to each end user (note that the term "inventive concept" is often used by the courts to describe additional element(s) that amount to significantly more than a judicial exception).

Other decisions, however, do not consider the absence of preemption as conferring patent eligibility (e.g., Synopsys, Fair Warning, Intellectual Ventures v. Symantec, Sequenom, and OIP).