Ex Parte George - Page 9

            Appeal Number: 2007-0133                                                                         
            Application Number: 10/223,466                                                                   

            Abele (“FWA”) test.  However, consistent with Arrhythmia, Alappat, State Street,                 
            and AT&T, the court also inquired into whether Schrader’s non-machine                            
            implemented method claim performed any kind of transformation.  Schrader, 22                     
            F.3d at 294 (“we do not find in the claim any kind of data transformation.”).  The               
            court then distinguished Schrader’s claim from the statutorily eligible claims in                
            Arrhythmia, In re Abele, 684 F.2d 902 (CCPA 1982), and In re Taner, 681 F.2d                     
            787 (CCPA 1982), pointing out that in these cases, “[t]hese claims all involved the              
            transformation or conversion of subject matter representative of or constituting                 
            physical activity or objects.  Id. (emphasis in original).  Schrader expressly                   
            concludes that “a process claim [in] compliance with Section 101 requires some                   
            kind of transformation or reduction of subject matter.”  Id. at 295.  In sum, the                
            Federal Circuit has never ruled that methods without any transformation or                       
            machine implementation are eligible, and appears in Schrader to have rejected that               
            proposition.  Accordingly, we do not find that the boundaries of “process” should                
            be so expansive as to accommodate all “useful” methods.                                          
                   Analysis of why claims 1, 5 through 15, 35 and 37 do not qualify as a                     
            statutory process                                                                                
                   Following Schrader, Appellant’s claims are unpatentable under section 101.                
            The claims are similar to those rejected in Schrader, while distinguishable from                 
            Arrhythmia, Alappat, State Street, and AT&T.  Appellant acknowledges that the                    
            claims do not require any machine to carry out the invention (Specification                      
            1:Summary of the Invention).  The claims do not transform any article to a                       
            different state or thing.  Nor do the claims recite a machine that employs a                     
            mathematical algorithm to transform data.  The final chart produced by the claims,               
            while perhaps “useful” in one sense as a template in the graphic arts, is simply not             


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