Codifying patent eligibility is key to broadening eligibility, maintaining flexibility, filtering out low-quality patents, and allowing for patents on emerging tech.

This approach - codifying courts' interpretation of the utility requirement and eliminating the search for an "inventive concept" would comport with the principles of broad eligibility, clarity, constraint on judicial intervention, and flexibility. First, eliminating the search for an "inventive application" in favor of a requirement of a practical application would certainly broaden eligibility as compared to the current law. While the interpretation of the practical utility requirement to require a "substantial" or "significant" benefit to the public would not appear to extend eligibility to inventions having "any" benefit to the public - such that operability is not all that is required to show a practical utility - courts' application of this aspect of the utility requirement has not proven to be unduly stringent. 258 Second, the law governing the requirement of a practical application has not proven to be unworkable; it is likely sufficiently clear.259 Third, again to meet the principle of restraint on judicial intervention, any amendment to articulate a standard focusing on practical utility would need to include additional language explaining that the requirement - the claimed subject matter be a practical, as opposed to an inventive, application of a natural law, physical phenomena, or abstract idea - is the only eligibility requirement beyond the subject matter requirement. Fourth, a standard focusing on practical utility would provide a workable standard independent of technology areas and would, thus, be appropriate for application to new and unforeseen technologies.