Appeal No. 2000-2225
Application 08/998,617
that is, have practical utility. Appellant argues that the
claimed invention clearly has practical utility [brief, pages 6-
8].
The examiner responds by essentially repeating the
statement of the rejection from the final rejection [answer,
pages 3-4]. Appellant responds that the claimed invention is
statutory in that it provides a concrete, non-abstract result in
the form of an extraordinary/ordinary binary floating point
number [reply brief].
As noted by appellant, it is the current view of the
court that unpatentable mathematical algorithms are identifiable
by showing that they are merely abstract ideas constituting
disembodied concepts or truths that are not “useful.” From a
practical standpoint, this means that to be patentable an
algorithm must be applied in a “useful” way. See State Street,
supra. To the extent that the examiner’s position is based on
concepts derived from the Freeman-Walter-Abele test, the
examiner’s position is untenable in the aftermath of the decision
in State Street.
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