Appeal Number: 2007-0133
Application Number: 10/223,466
abstract idea.” State Street, 149 F.3d at 1373. In Arrhythmia, the Court held “the
transformation of electrocardiograph signals” “by a machine” “constituted a
practical application of an abstract idea.” Id. Likewise, in State Street, the Court
held that “the transformation of data” “by a machine” “into a final share price,
constitutes a practical application of a mathematical algorithm.” Id. Thus, while
Diehr involved the transformation of a tangible object - curing synthetic rubber –
the Federal Circuit also regards the transformation of intangible subject matter to
similarly be eligible, so long as data or signals represent some real world activity.
We view this “data transformation” test as an appropriate way to evaluate subject
matter eligibility.
The Federal Circuit has never held or indicated that a non-machine
implemented process involving no transformation can qualify as a “process” under
§ 101. In fact, confronted with such claims, it has rejected them consistently. See
In re Schrader, 22 F.3d 290 (Fed. Cir. 1994); In re Grams, 888 F.2d 835 (Fed. Cir.
1989) (rejecting claims to method of evaluating a system that incorporated a
mathematical algorithm, where the only physical step was a data gathering step
that was not tied to the algorithm); In re Maucorps, 609 F.2d 481, 484 (CCPA
1979); In re Meyer, 688 F.2d 789, 796 (CCPA 1982); see also In re Alappat, 33
F3d 1526, 1543 (Fed. Cir. 1994) (en banc) (“Maucorps dealt with a business
methodology for deciding how salesmen should best handle respective customers
and Meyer involved a ‘system’ for aiding a neurologist in diagnosing patients.
Clearly, neither of the alleged ‘inventions’ in those cases falls within any § 101
category.”)
In Schrader, the court affirmed the 101 rejection of a method of competitively
bidding on a plurality of related items, relying in part on the Freeman-Walter-
8
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next
Last modified: September 9, 2013