"This is a useful sample because each draws on a different strand of the utility doctrine, all tracing back through Brenner v. Manson, 383 U.S. 519 (1966), and the Federal Circuit's "implausible scientific principles" standard from In re Brana, 51 F.3d 1560 (Fed. Cir. 1995), that authorizes examiners to refuse claims premised on physics the applicant has not made credible."
Utility rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 101 have become uncommon at the USPTO. In 2025, more than 650,000 office action rejections were mailed, but only 294 raised a utility ground. A small random sample of utility-bearing office actions mailed in early 2026 includes a pro se application claiming curing leukemia and enabling easy births through time travel and “inspiration zones,” an energy production approach recreating black hole conditions in a heated steel enclosure, and a cold-fusion-adjacent device driven by “cycled electromagnetic radiation.” Other examples include a long-pending biochemistry case about whether melanin can synthesize glucose from carbon dioxide and a room-temperature-superconductor application from a prominent condensed-matter lab. These utility rejections trace to Brenner v. Manson and the Federal Circuit’s “implausible scientific principles” standard from In re Brana, allowing refusals when applicants have not made credible that claimed physics works.
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