Appeal Number: 2007-0133
Application Number: 10/223,466
The Appellant argues the chart is useful because it provides better information
than the raw data. The chart can be quickly used to determine when the traveler
will be alert or tired. However, the Appellant merely asserts in this argument that
the chart presents useful information, as would a printed handbook or table, not
that it performs anything useful. Further, nothing in the claim limits the claimed
subject matter to data describing actual measurements2 of real world data. The
Appellant also argues that a chart is concrete and tangible. While the substrate on
which the chart is drawn may be a physical structure, the chart itself is no more
than a pattern that is presented on the substrate and in itself is insubstantial.
The Appellant argues that as in State Street, id., data is transformed. In State
Street, data was physically entered into a computer system that executed electrical
processes upon the data to transform the data into actual share prices that were
relied upon by regulatory agencies. Id. at 1373, 47 USPQ2d at 1602. In the claims
at hand, data is drawn in the form of a static chart. There is no electrical process
that converts one signal into another in the claims at issue.
Thus, we find the Appellant’s arguments to be unpersuasive.
2 Although the claims refer to “representing personal” data, the elements are just
that, representations of such data, not measurements of actual personal data. The
specification at 5 discloses that “[t]hese instructions assume a normal sleep-wake
cycle . . . .”
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