What types of inventions are not eligible for patent protection?
Some types of inventions will not qualify for a patent, no matter how interesting or important they are. For example, mathematical formulas, laws of nature, newly discovered substances that occur naturally in the world, and purely theoretical phenomena — for instance, a scientific principle like superconductivity — have long been considered unpatentable. In addition, the following categories of inventions don’t qualify for patents: • processes done entirely by human motor coordination, such as choreographed dance routines or a method for meditation • most protocols and methods used to perform surgery on humans • printed matter that has no unique physical shape or structure associated with it • unsafe new drugs • inventions useful only for illegal purposes, and • non-operable inventions, including “perpetual motion” machines (which are presumed to be non-operable because to operate they would have to violate certain bedrock scientific principles).
