“As explained by the Court, the test serves as a proxy for assess­ing the more fun­da­men­tal con­cern – ensur­ing that the claim does not seek to imper­mis­si­bly “pre­empt the use of a fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple.” This might make sense in the con­text of so-​​called busi­ness method patents, where the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple impli­cated is typ­i­cally char­ac­ter­ized as an abstract idea or men­tal process. But it is unclear to what extent this test will prove applic­a­ble to patent claims aris­ing out of the life sci­ences, where patentable sub­ject mat­ter chal­lenges more often allege pre­emp­tion of a nat­ural phe­nom­ena or law of nature, rather than an abstract idea or men­tal process.”

“ICANN recently has wanted to make a lot of changes to its stan­dard Reg­is­trar Accred­i­ta­tion Agree­ment. It found that it was was con­strained by an even ear­lier ver­sion of the con­sen­sus pol­icy process idea, and has found this frus­trat­ing. So it wants the flex­i­bil­ity to make changes with­out going through a pol­icy process, and it’s (ini­tially) say­ing that although those changes can be over­rid­den in some ways they will auto­mat­i­cally become effec­tive if they are *not* overridden.”