Law360, New York (June 12, 2014, 10:31 AM EDT) -- On March 4, 2014, following a nine-month conclave, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published examination guidelines, instructing patent examiners how to decide what types of inventions involving "laws of nature/natural principles, natural phenomena, and/or natural products" may be patent-eligible. The guidelines (and additional training materials published shortly thereafter) provoked immediate outcry from stakeholders in the biotechnology, pharmaceutical and chemical industries because the guidelines (1) were drafted and implemented without public comment; (2) are more restrictive than decades of PTO examination practice prior to March 2014; and (3) threaten to leave many valuable innovations unprotectable. (In fact, the guidelines could be read as the PTO calling into question the continued validity of many patents that the PTO issued before March 2014.) The guidelines have numerous shortcomings that invite criticism, a selection of which were highlighted in my March 10 Law360 guest column, "10 Problems In The USPTO's New Training Memo." The most fundamental problem is the guidelines' questionable interpretation of the patent statute and U.S. Supreme Court interpretations of that statute....