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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