Director's memorandum narrows the mental-process rejection and imposes an evidence standard

2025-08-04USPTO

Memorandum, “Reminders on Evaluating Subject Matter Eligibility of Claims under 35 U.S.C. 101” (Aug. 4, 2025), directed to Technology Centers 2100, 2600, and 3600

The Director issued a memorandum to the software and business-method art units reminding examiners that a process falls in the mental-process grouping only if a human could practically perform it, not merely if a human could theoretically perform some version of it, and that an eligibility rejection must be supported under the same preponderance-of-the-evidence standard as any other rejection.

What it changesCite the memorandum by name in the response and make the examiner carry the evidentiary burden. Where a claim recites a computation no person could practically perform — the data volume, the latency requirement, or the model size makes it impossible — say so on the record with the numbers from the specification.

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