Ex parte Desjardins: When AI Training Claims Are Eligible

The Patent Office rejected a machine learning training application as an abstract idea. The Director convened a special panel, took the case back on its own motion, and reversed.

The reason is narrow and useful: the specification described learning new tasks without forgetting old ones, and a limitation in claim 1 actually required it, adjusting parameters to optimize performance on a second task "while protecting performance" on the first. That, the panel said, is an improvement to how the model operates rather than a mathematical calculation.

Two things get left out of most summaries. The Patent Office insists this announced no new practice. And the claims remain rejected for obviousness, so the applicant won eligibility and still does not have a patent.

Why an Agency Decision Sits Differently

This is a USPTO decision, not a court decision, and one Supreme Court case explains why that distinction now carries more weight than it used to.

On June 28, 2024, in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the Court overruled Chevron and held that the Administrative Procedure Act "requires courts to exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, and courts may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous."

There are no patent facts in that case. It matters here because the Patent Office's eligibility guidance, including the guidance this decision was applied under, is agency interpretation. Examiners still follow it, and it still governs what happens during prosecution. A court reviewing the same statute owes it less than it used to.

That is a statement about deference, not a prediction. Nothing in Loper Bright makes USPTO guidance invalid, unenforceable, or safe to disregard, and nothing in it makes AI patents easier or harder to obtain.

How often it is actually cited

The Office designated this decision precedential on 4 November 2025, which binds its own examiners and the Board. Before that date the name appears in a handful of Office actions a month. The two months after it are a different picture entirely, and they are the clearest thing in our data about what designation does.

The eligibility rate it sits inside

The same two years, for the applications this decision is about. AI applications draw a section 101 rejection about four times as often as applications generally.

A phrase match over the text of the action. It counts what an action cites and says nothing about whether the citation was apt, nor anything about any particular application.

What This Case Is Not

• It does not bind courts. Agency adjudications and Federal Circuit opinions are different authorities.
• It does not mean training claims are eligible generally. The limitation in this claim did specific work.
• It does not mean the applicant has a patent.

Educational, not legal advice. Whether any particular claim is eligible under § 101 is a legal conclusion a qualified patent attorney reaches on the actual claims.