Abstracting About 'Abstract Idea'

4 Pages Posted: 24 Dec 2016 Last revised: 10 Jul 2022

Date Written: December 23, 2016

Abstract

How to precisely define “abstract idea” in patent law has long puzzled judges, scholars, and practitioners. Frankly, “no one understands what makes an idea abstract.”

Efforts hitherto have failed because, in short, they have inevitably used either “equally abstract” or “overly narrow” terms. Defining “abstract idea” with equally difficult-to-define terms “only perpetuates the problem.” Ergo, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly declined “to delimit the precise contours of the ‘abstract ideas’ category.”

Yet “abstract idea” is, by definition, too abstract for a concrete definition. As the Federal Circuit succinctly put: “The problem with articulating a single, universal definition of ‘abstract idea’ is that it is difficult to fashion a workable definition to be applied to as-yet-unknown cases with as-yet-unknown inventions.”

Perhaps one could, should, and ought to think more abstractly about “abstract idea” to conceptualize, understand, and appreciate what “abstract idea” means. Put simply, concretizing “abstract idea” necessarily requires abstracting about “abstract idea.” Indeed, “the idea which we abstract [about]...will always be abstracted.”

Keywords: patent, abstract idea, 101, patentable subject matter, Alice v. CLS Bank, humor, satire, joke, humour

JEL Classification: O3, O33, O34, K00, K10, K11, K34, N3

Suggested Citation

Tran, Jasper, Abstracting About 'Abstract Idea' (December 23, 2016). Iowa Law Review Online, Vol. 102, p. 60, 2016, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2888401

Jasper Tran (Contact Author)

Harvard Business School ( email )

Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
United States

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