I. Introduction The recent Federal Circuit cases on patent eligibility do not simply show that U.S. law has become hostile to particular technologies. They show something more specific and more institutional: the United States often asks threshold eligibility doctrine to perform work that other patent systems assign to inventive step, enablement, support, or claim clarity. The point is not that those other systems are necessarily more generous. They may be demanding in differ

Consider a familiar device-company scenario. A regulatory team prepares a 510(k) and tells FDA that a design feature tracks a predicate device, is supported by familiar engineering literature, and does not raise new questions of safety or effectiveness. Around the same time, the patent team argues to the USPTO that the same feature, or a particular implementation of it, is central to novelty or nonobviousness. Each position may be defensible. The risk begins when no one has p