The issue of patentable subject matter has made a dramatic resurgence in patent litigation within the past decade. The analysis of whether certain subject matter is patent eligible is governed by 35 U.S.C. § 101. Section 101 carries with it the judicial constructions of patent eligibility that had evolved over the course of 160 years prior to the statute’s enactment. In developing their jurisprudence, courts were consistent in holding that laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas constituted patent ineligible subject matter. Inventor Albert Einstein could never successfully patent his famed equation E=mc2, nor could Newton claim gravity. The reason is simple: such discoveries are facets of nature belonging to the whole of society, not to any one individual.