Clear guidance is a good thing. Clear guidance should result in fewer rejections, because with good guidance fewer people should be filing bad applications to

Clear guidance is a good thing. Clear guidance should result in fewer rejections, because with good guidance fewer people should be filing bad applications to begin with. The real test will be whether the applications that issue survive challenges in the courts. The courts do not consider the PTO's guidelines in determining whether the patents are valid. In other words, the PTO can't change the actual standard. All they can do is reject patents that don't meet that standard, and if they fail to do so, the patents will be found ineligible by the courts when they are asserted. The PTO's guidance is only useful in helping attorneys and examiners shepherd through patents that will then be tested in the courts. Bad patents will still be shot down if they survive the PTO (as they should be). In short, I love the EFF but I'm not sure why they are complaining about this.