If you take some time to look through the enormous catalog of patents the United States government has granted over the course of nearly two and a half centuries, you’ll find some interesting concepts, to put it kindly.
A general concept in that nebulous task of deciding whether to grant a patent and what exactly the patent is for is that you can’t patent an abstract idea. The “whats-it” you apply to the patent must exist in the corporeal realm, and it must serve a demonstrable purpose.
According to the most recent court to consider the complaint, that abstract idea concept was the cause of a recent challenge to the operation of several regulated US online casinos.
