What are examples of insignificant post-solution activity in patent claims?
Insignificant post-solution activity refers to actions or steps that are performed after the main part of an invention and do not add meaningful limitations to the claim. According to MPEP 2106.05(g), examples of insignificant post-solution activity include:
- Printing or downloading generated menus
- Presenting offers and gathering statistics
- Cutting a meat patty after cooking it
- Outputting a report of results
The MPEP states: “An example of post-solution activity is an element that is not integrated into the claim as a whole, e.g., a printer that is used to output a report of fraudulent transactions, which is recited in a claim to a computer programmed to analyze and manipulate information about credit card transactions in order to detect whether the transactions were fraudulent.” These activities are generally considered insignificant because they are incidental to the primary process or product and do not impose meaningful limits on the claim scope.
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