An Emerging Section 101 Expansion to Section 112(a) Enablement? The Federal Circuit Should Stop It Now

The most dominant, divisive issue in patent law over the last decade—Section101-eligibility and the Supreme Court’s Mayo-Alice framework—appears to have just become more divisive. Indeed, at least part of the reason for the controversy is that, with Mayo-Alice as the governing test, courts as a preliminary matter can decide Section101-eligibility based on considerations of an “inventive concept” and patentability—issues the Court once declared were “not relevant” to the separate eligibility provision of the Patent Act. Be that as it may, the Federal Circuit has recently issued certain decisions indicating that Section 101 now incorporates another vast area of invalidity; viz., the requirements for “enablement” under 35 U.S.C. §112(a). See, e.g., Customedia Technologies, LLC v. Dish Network Corp., 951 F.3d 1359, 1365-66 (Fed. Cir. March 6, 2020). In this article, we examine how this new requirement for Section 101 has emerged, the recent precedent on the issue, and the Patent Act’s requirements that undermine such Section 112(a) considerations for a Section 101-eligibilty test.

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