New Patent Law Overhauls Eligibility Rules: Say Goodbye to Judicial Exceptions, Hello to Broader Patents

The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act of 2025 is a massive shakeup for anyone involved in innovation, from the garage inventor to the biotech giant. Essentially, this bill aims to fix years of confusion in the courts by resetting the rules for what can get a patent. It does this by wiping out the messy, judge-made exceptions that have increasingly restricted patent eligibility under Section 101 of the U.S. Code, stating clearly that if an invention is a useful process, machine, product, or material—or an improvement to those—it’s eligible for protection, unless explicitly excluded (SEC. 2).

The Great Patent Reset: What’s In, What’s Out

For years, innovators—especially in software and diagnostics—have been frustrated by courts throwing out patent claims because they were deemed too abstract or simply covered a ‘natural law.’ This bill attempts to end that uncertainty. By eliminating these judicial exceptions, the bill restores a much broader definition of patent eligibility. If you’re a software developer, this means your new algorithm might finally be protected without jumping through endless legal hoops, provided it’s tied to a machine or manufactured item (SEC. 2).

However, the bill draws some hard lines. You still can't patent pure mathematical formulas, mental processes that only happen in a human mind, or processes that are mostly just about economics, finance, or art (SEC. 2). Think of it this way: you can’t patent the concept of “proposing marriage,” even if you write it down as a step-by-step process. But if your process requires a custom-built machine to execute, then it’s back on the table (SEC. 3).

The Biotech Tightrope Walk

The changes in the biotech and medical fields are particularly significant. The bill explicitly bans patents on an unmodified human gene exactly as it exists in the body, or any natural material exactly as it exists in nature (SEC. 2). This is a direct response to past court cases that allowed patents on isolated DNA. The good news for researchers is that if you purify, enrich, or otherwise alter that natural material or gene, or use it in a useful invention, it can be patentable. For example, a diagnostic test using an altered gene sequence would be eligible, but trying to patent the naturally occurring sequence itself is off-limits.

Speeding Up the Lawsuit Showdown

Perhaps the most practical change for businesses facing litigation is how eligibility is handled in court. If you get sued for patent infringement, the court can now decide early on whether the patent is even eligible under these new rules. A party can ask the court to rule on eligibility right away, and the court can allow limited discovery—meaning only questions directly related to eligibility—before making a decision (SEC. 3). For busy companies, this could be a huge time and money saver, allowing them to knock out weak, ineligible patents before getting bogged down in years of costly litigation. However, the flip side is that ruling too quickly with limited facts could lead to some legitimate patents being dismissed prematurely.

The Real-World Trade-Off

This bill is a major win for innovators seeking clarity and broader protection for their work, especially in tech sectors that rely on complex processes and software. The uncertainty around patent eligibility has been a genuine drag on investment. But there’s a trade-off. By eliminating the judicial guardrails, there's a risk that the public domain—the pool of fundamental knowledge and concepts available to everyone—could shrink if overly broad or abstract concepts start getting patented. The bill tries to prevent this with its exclusions, but the line between a patentable “useful improvement” and an unpatentable “abstract idea” is one that lawyers will be fighting over for years to come (SEC. 4).