Appeal No. 1998-2848
Application 08/398,862
Although Appellant reproduces the independent claims, this
does not constitute an argument as to why the claims are
separately patentable. Id. Under the rules, we could
consider claims 1-39 to stand or fall together with claim 1,
in which case all the claims would be considered nonstatutory
because claim 1 is nonstatutory. However, we have decided to
address the independent claims separately. The dependent
claims will stand or fall with their respective independent
claim.
Independent claim 1 and dependent claims 2-14
The "disassociated computer program" in claim 1 is a
computer program per se, i.e., a computer program in the
abstract and not embodied in any tangible medium. It is
considered non-statutory "functional descriptive material" for
the reasons discussed in the Guidelines and the MPEP. The
"ETC corresponding to a disassociated computer code segment
and having an electronic format" is a data structure per se,
i.e., a data structure (as shown in Figure 1) in the abstract
and not embodied in any tangible medium. It is also
considered non-statutory "functional descriptive material" for
the reasons discussed in the Guidelines and the MPEP. Claim
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