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kc99 writes:

The death of software patents in the United States has been greatly exaggerated. In a memo to Patent Examiners, the United States Patent And Trademark Office (USPTO) has released preliminary examination guidelines in view of the U.S. Supreme Court's recent opinion in Alice v. CLS Bank. The guidelines, which have been provided in a post on the patent blog Patently-O [PDF], specify that:

Alice Corp. neither creates a per se excluded category of subject matter, such as software or business methods, nor imposes any special requirements for eligibility of software or business methods.

The memo notes that "the basic inquiries to determine subject matter eligibility remain the same" and guide Examiners that they must "first determine whether the claim is directed to one of the four statutory categories of invention, i.e., process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter. If the claim does not fall within one of the categories, reject the claim as being directed to non-statutory subject matter". Then, "if the claim does fall within one of the statutory categories, determine whether the claim is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., law of nature, natural phenomenon, and abstract idea) using Part I of [a] two-part analysis... and, if so, determine whether the claim is a patent-eligible application of an exception using Part 2 [of the two-part analysis]".

More details of the proposed analysis are provided in the guidelines linked to above.