Bibliographic record
Abstract
[enter Abstract Body]This article argues that the law of patentable subject-matter has been plagued by a failure to distinguish between two functionally distinct doctrines: the rule against abstract claims, which prohibits abstract claims in any field of endeavour, and field-specific exclusions, which prohibit patents in a particular field, regardless of whether the claim is abstract or applied. This distinction allows a reconciliation of the broad definition of patentable “art” in Shell Oil with the narrow definition of “composition of matter” in Harvard Mouse. Shell Oil is the definitive case on the rule against abstract claims, but its expansive approach to “invention” cannot be taken as the final word on field-specific exclusions. The broad definition in Shell Oil applies presumptively, but a restrictive interpretation of “invention” is permissible if there are sufficiently compelling policy reasons, as in Harvard Mouse. Applying this framework to Amazon.com, the article argues that while Phelan J was too dismissive of the view that policy considerations can inform the definition of “invention,” his decision was nonetheless fundamentally right for the right reasons. The evidence presented by the Commissioner that business method patents would impede innovation was far too weak to displace even a modest presumption in favour of the broad Shell Oil definition of “invention.” Further, the European framework adopted by the Commissioner was rightly rejected, as it conflates the rule against abstract claims and field-specific restrictions, and is consequently incoherent.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.013 | 0.028 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.040 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.016 | 0.015 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.011 | 0.012 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.011 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".