Appeal No. 1998-1733
Application No. 07/617,303
space that surrounds a physical object. Cost waves are propagated in the space data
structure in order to fill the structure with cost values. Each state, along permissible
directions of travel, is assigned a cost value and a direction of travel corresponding to a
physical least cost path from a starting point to a goal point. A series of discrete states
along the physical path is determined, which is then usable by a physical object to
follow the physical path.
This case, along with a related case, Application Serial No. 07/508,024, has had
a long and torturous prosecution history. Instant claims 1-15, 17-23 and 33 have been
previously appealed to this Board and a decision was rendered in that case on May 26,
1993 wherein the examiner’s decision rejecting the claims as being directed to
nonstatutory subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101 was affirmed-in-part, sustaining the
rejection with regard to claims 1-23 and 33 but not sustaining the rejection as to claims
24-26. Thus, the rejection, under 35 U.S.C. § 101, of all of the claims presently before
us in the instant case was sustained in our earlier decision. On appeal to the Court of
Appeals for the Federal Circuit, our reviewing court affirmed the decision of the Board in
this case, as well as in the companion case, on December 19, 1994 (In re Trovato,
42 F.3d 1376, 33 USPQ2d 1194 (Fed. Cir. 1994)). Then, in a decision of July 25, 1995,
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