Patentable

PCR is an important technique, but it wasn’t patentable.

Algorithms, by themselves, are not usually patentable.

However, practical applications of algorithms are sometimes patentable.

In the end the courts held that human genes were not patentable.

In the United States, a claim consisting solely of simple manipulations of abstract concepts, numbers, or signals does not constitute "processes" (USPTO 2006), and hence algorithms are not patentable (as in Gottschalk v. Benson ).

The European invention concept corresponds to the American "patentable subject matter" concept: the first test a patent application is submitted to.

The FTC also argued tetracycline was not patentable because of its production through fermentation. citation Pfizer was of the view that it deserved the right to a patent on tetracycline and filed its Conover application in October 1952.

The FTC had argued because tetracycline was produced through fermentation, rather than synthetically, it was not patentable, and its distribution was subject to pricing fixing challenge.

While the statute (35 USC § 101) virtually poses no limits to patenting whatsoever, courts have decided in binding precedents that abstract ideas, natural phenomena and laws of nature are not patentable.