Appeal No. 96-1455
Application No. 08/218,279
Turning first to the rejection of claims 1-6 and 25 under
35 U.S.C. § 101 as directed to non-statutory subject matter
directed to "printed matter," we will not sustain this
rejection.
Our reviewing court addressed the extension of the
"printed matter" to rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 101 in In re
Lowry, 32 F.3d 1579, 1583, 32 USPQ2d 1031, 1034 (Fed. Cir.
1994). The court stated:
[T]he Board erroneously extended a printed matter
rejection under sections 102 and 103 to a new field
in this case, which involves information stored in a
memory. This case, moreover, is distinguishable
from the printed matter cases. The printed matter
cases "dealt with claims defining as the invention
certain novel arrangements of printed lines or
characters, useful and intelligible only to the
human mind." In re Bernhart, 417 F.2d 1395, 1399,
163 USPQ 611, 615 (CCPA 1969). The printed matter
cases have no factual relevance where "the invention
as defined by the claims requires that the
information be processed not by the mind but by a
machine, the computer." Id. (emphasis in original).
Lowry's data structures, which according to Lowry
greatly facilitate data management by data
processing systems, are processed by a machine.
Indeed, they are not accessible other than through
sophisticated software systems. The printed matter
cases have no factual relevance here.
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