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

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.

To learn more:

• pre-solution activity
• post-solution activity
• data gathering
• output generation