What are examples of pre-solution and post-solution activities?

This page is an FAQ based on guidance from the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure. It is provided as guidance, with links to the ground truth sources. This is information only: it is not legal advice.

Pre-solution and post-solution activities are types of insignificant extra-solution activities. The MPEP 2106.05(g) provides examples:

• Pre-solution activity: “A step of gathering data for use in a claimed process, e.g., a step of obtaining information about credit card transactions, which is recited as part of a claimed process of analyzing and manipulating the gathered information by a series of steps in order to detect whether the transactions were fraudulent.”
• Post-solution activity: “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 examples illustrate how extra-solution activities are peripheral to the main invention and do not integrate the judicial exception into a practical application.