By Erik Wright and Austen Zuege From Intellectual Property Today, Vol. 21, No. 11 (November 2014) In recent cases such as Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 134 S.Ct. 2347 (2014), the Supreme Court has reiterated that abstract ideas, laws of nature, and natural phenomena cannot be patented. Inventions directed to any of these three categories must include sufficient extra material to form the basis of a patent. The Court has provided some guidance as to what kinds of claim language can satisfy this requirement, but has thus far declined to define the principal categories of patent-ineligible subject matter in...