Appeal No. 97-0244
Application 08/042,357
mathematical decoding operation in claim 4.
We are not persuaded by appellants' arguments that a
"machine" within 35 U.S.C. § 101 and a specific apparatus in
the form of a recited "system" and its attendant "elements"
neces-sarily are limited to structure per se. They are
essentially undefined in these claims. Appellants have not
traversed the examiner's view that the recited elements are
steps of a mathematical algorithm as argued at page 4 of the
answer. The
claimed recitation in the preamble of claims 3 and 4 of
respec-tive systems for encoding and decoding data
representations are
not necessarily a recitation of a machine within 35 U.S.C. §
101 by the mere drafting technique of each claim featuring the
respective "systems" stated to comprise various "elements".
Claims 3 and 4 convert any and all numeric "values" from
one form to another by the respective encoding and decoding
opera-tions in these claims. Indeed, the subject matter of
claims 3 and 4 is much broader than the disclosed document
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