Appeal No. 2004-0403
Application 09/100,684
without receiving the minimum amount due from the customer."
This implies, but leaves it indefinite, that the offer was an
offer to pay at least a portion of the amount due if the
individual becomes a customer of the third party. Claim 28 is
considered indefinite and/or incomplete without qualification of
the nature of the offer.
Claims 22-26 and 28-30 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as
being directed to nonstatutory subject matter. Our
interpretation of these claims is that they do not expressly or
implicitly require performance of any of the steps by a machine,
such as general purpose digital computer. Structure will not be
read into the claims for the purposes of the statutory subject
matter analysis even though the steps might be capable of being
performed by a machine.
Statutory subject matter requires two things: (1) it must be
in the "useful arts," U.S. Const., art. I, § 8, cl. 8, which is
equivalent to the modern "industrial" or "technological arts,"
defined by Congress in the four categories of "process, machine,
manufacture, or composition of matter" in 35 U.S.C. § 101; and,
if it is, (2) it must not fall within one of the exceptions for
"laws of nature, physical phenomena and abstract ideas." Under
the most recent Federal Circuit cases, transformation of data
by a machine (e.g., a computer) is statutory subject matter
provided the claims recite a "practical application, i.e.,
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