The Supreme Court affirmed the Federal Circuit’s decision in Alice Corporation v. CLS Bank holding that patents directed to schemes or methods of mitigating settlement risks in the exchange of financial obligations between two parties claimed unpatentable subject matter.  Although the patents recited system claims implementing the method on a computer system, the Supreme Court held that merely reciting a generic computer in the claims does not make an otherwise abstract idea patent eligible.  The decision re-affirms long-standing Supreme Court precedent with respect to the un-patentability of abstract ideas and reiterates the importance of drafting the patent application on such methods in a way that takes the claimed subject matter out of the abstract idea category and puts it into the implementation category.  Without an adequate disclosure of a specialized implementation, the patent application may be rejected by the patent office and, even if the application is granted, any patent obtained could be invalidated in litigation. Click for the Alice Decision.