Appeal No. 2006-2228
Application No. 10/231,678
powers and devices to perform some function and produce a certain effect or
result." Corning v. Burden, 56 U.S. 252, 267 (1854); see also Burr v. Duryee,
68 U.S. 531, 570 (1863) (a machine is a concrete thing, consisting of parts or of
certain devices and combinations of devices). Machines do not have to have
moving parts. In modern parlance, electrical circuits and devices, such as
computers, are referred to as machines. The intangible "carrier wave" or a
"propagated signal" embodiment of claim 35 has no concrete tangible physical
structure, and does not perform any functions itself. Therefore, any such
intangible does not fit within the definition of a "machine."
A "manufacture" and a "composition of matter" are defined in Diamond
v. Chakrabarty, 447 U.S. 303, 308, 206 USPQ 193, 196-97 (1980):
[T]his Court has read the term "manufacture" in accordance with its
dictionary definition to mean "the production of articles for use from raw
or prepared materials by giving to these materials new forms, qualities,
properties, or combinations, whether by hand-labor or by machinery."
American Fruit Growers, Inc. v. Brogdex Co., 283 U.S. 1, 11 (1931).
Similarly, "composition of matter" has been construed consistent with
common usage to include "all compositions of two or more substances
and ... all composite articles, whether they be results of chemical union,
or of mechanical mixture, or whether they be gases, fluids, powders or
solids." Shell Development Co. v. Watson, 149 F. Supp. 279, 280 (D.C.
1957) (citing 1 A. Deller, Walker on Patents § 14, p. 55 (1st ed. 1937).
[Parallel citations omitted.]
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