Appeal 2007-0345
Application 09/812,417
effect would be a patent on the [abstract idea] itself.” Benson, 409 U.S. at
71-72, 175 USPQ 676-677.12 Such limitations on process patents are
important because without them, “a competent draftsman [could] evade the
recognized limitations on the type of subject matter eligible for patent
protection.” Diehr, 450 U.S. at 192, 209 USPQ at 10.
Because Appellants’ claim 1 is completely untethered from any sort of
structure or physical step, it is directed to a disembodied concept. In other
words, the claim is nothing but a disembodied abstract idea until it is
instantiated in some physical way so as to be limited to a practical
application of the idea.
For example, claim 1 does not recite any structural details regarding
what constitutes a “future program information display.” Also, the claim
does not recite structural details regarding how the future program
information of the selected future program is displayed, apart from broadly
reciting an “indicator.”
The term “display” is defined as “[a] visual representation of
information.”13 Merely broadly reciting that a future program action is
“indicated” on a “display” and “providing” a “future programs actions
12 The observation in State Street that “[w]hether the patent’s claims are too
broad to be patentable is not to be judged under § 101, but rather under §§
102, 103, and 112” did not, nor could it, overrule the Supreme Court’s pre-
emption doctrine. See State Street, 149 F.3d at 1377, 47 USPQ2d at 1604.
Rather, pre-emption was not at issue in State Street since the claim in that
case was particularly confined to a machine implementation, and did not
suffer from the same defect as Appellants’ claim.
13 The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed.,
2000, available at http:// www.bartleby.com/61/15/D0281500.html (last
visited Mar. 22, 2007).
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