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Senate Judiciary Committee Hears PERA Testimony
Intellectual property law may be changing in a big way. On July 14, 2026 the Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony on PERA which stands for Patent Eligibility Restoration Act of 2025. Hopefully they’ll update the title to “2026” if it becomes law this year. PERA, if enacted, will add some much needed clarity to what types of inventions are eligible for patent protection. It will also generally support better, stronger and more predictably enforceable patents, especially for entrepreneurs, as will be seen below.
Patent eligibility is one of the 4 statutory criteria for gaining patent protection, the others being novelty, non-obviousness and enablement/written description/best mode/definiteness.
The Legal Backdrop: Decades of Inconsistent Rulings
Since Congress has never defined eligibility, it has been defined by case law through numerous judicial decisions. The judicial tests have wandered about over the years, and Courts have attempted to present finite applicable tests, particularly in the software, biological products, and diagnostic technologies. Despite their best efforts, Courts have applied the tests inconsistently, with erratic results, and have openly acknowledged with frustration that some innovations that should be patentable fail the eligibility tests. Judges have called on the legislative branch, i.e., Congress to throw them a lifeline and define eligibility.
Mayo, Myriad, and Alice: The Cases PERA Would Codify
It looks as if Congress has finally taken note, and has, or is about to, or is potentially about to, address the eligibility challenge. There are three major Supreme Court decisions that define eligibility, Mayo, Myriad, and Alice.* Mayo governs laws of nature, Myriad governs natural products, and Alice governs abstract ideas and computer-implemented inventions.
The traditional court-defined categories exclude inventions that are either laws of nature, common natural phenomena, or abstract ideas. If the invention falls into one of these categories, then a patent examiner or court will ask if the claim elements, individually or as an ordered combination, provide “significantly more” than the exception itself. If there is significantly more, then the utility barrier is met. Got it?
Supporters of PERA emphasize that the legislation will codify Mayo, Myriad, and Alice, and then clarify the exceptions through an enumerated list. The approach allegedly will add clarity to decision-making around patent eligibility.
What PERA Would Change for AI and Life Sciences Patents
It’s a bit of a stretch to generalize too much about what will happen in the long run if the legislation is enacted, but based upon early comments, it does seem that the legislation will support more and broader AI patents as well as allow for more diagnostic patents to be granted. In the AI world, patents around model architecture, training techniques, data compression, computer vision, cybersecurity etc., which were difficult or impossible to patent in the past, could and likely will become eligible if the legislation is enacted.
On the life sciences side, PERA would make many life-science inventions—especially diagnostic methods, biomarker applications, purified natural products, and engineered biological materials—more likely to qualify as patent-eligible by replacing the broad Mayo/Myriad judicial exceptions with narrower statutory exclusions.
What Comes Next
We support the Congressional effort to expand and clarify eligibility. Entrepreneurs and startups rely heavily on intellectual property to maintain exclusivity while their companies grow, and reliable intellectual property rules add credibility to the intellectual property system. Stronger patents will encourage more investment in IP-sensitive technologies. It was noted during the hearings that China, for example, is allowing more patents in the AI space and that our failure to make similar protections available in the US could hurt the development of important technologies here.
Finally, even if an innovation is subject-matter eligible, it must still meet the hurdles of novelty, non-obviousness, and written description/enablement before a patent can be granted. Eligibility is only a first step in patent examination, and one must still possess something new and inventive in order to procure a patent. The clearer eligibility rules should allow more types of inventions to be considered, but they will still have to meet traditional standards in order to be granted.
Regardless of what happens with this legislation, whether it is enacted or stalls in Congress (entirely possible), we will keep you updated on developments.
Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., 566 U.S. 66 (2012); Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., 569 U.S. 576 (2013); Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International, 573 U.S. 208 (2014).