Posts Tagged: "Alice"

Although the Supreme Court in Alice declined to provide an express definition of “abstract idea,” the opinion is packed with evidence that the Court intended for the term “abstract idea” to apply not to any “abstract idea” in the colloquial sense, but only more specifically to abstract ideas that are fundamental practices long prevalent in their fields… [A]lthough the Court did not provide a definition of “abstract idea,” its reasoning implies that it intended to limit the concept of “abstract ideas” to those concepts which are fundamental and long prevalent, possibly to concepts which have been well-known and extensively used for hundreds of years. An even more narrow, but very reasonable, interpretation of Alice, given the opinion’s strong emphasis on the risk hedging claims in Bilski, the “intermediated settlement” concept allegedly embodied in the claims at issue in Alice, and the repeated references to “economic practices,” “finance class,” “commerce,” and “the modern economy,” is that the Court intended for “abstract ideas” to be limited primarily or entirely to financial methods.