Patent Law

Intellectually Amish

By Gary Odom and Jordan Kuhn

Patent examiners are embracing §101 rejection for process claims, reinvigorated by Bilski. Oddly, the rejections often skirt citing Bilski directly, instead relying upon earlier precedent, such as Benson. The Bilski ruling favorably cited 1982 Abele for discrimination between overreaching claims and more "narrowly-claimed process patent-eligible." Abele provides an escape route from rejection, by analogy: data that represents "physical and tangible objects."

In its Bilski opinion, what the CAFC had to say about In re Abele, 684 F.2d 902 (CCPA 1982) -

The raw materials of many information-age processes, however, are electronic signals and electronically-manipulated data. And some so-called business methods, such as that claimed in the present case, involve the manipulation of even more abstract constructs such as legal obligations, organizational relationships, and business risks. Which, if any, of these processes qualify as a transformation or reduction of an article into a different state or thing constituting patent-eligible subject matter?

Our case law has taken a measured approach to this question, and we see no reason here to expand the boundaries of what constitutes patent-eligible transformations of articles.

Our predecessor court's mixed result in Abele illustrates this point. There, we held unpatentable a broad independent claim reciting a process of graphically displaying variances of data from average values. Abele, 684 F.2d at 909. That claim did not specify any particular type or nature of data; nor did it specify how or from where the data was obtained or what the data represented. Id.; see also In re Meyer, 688 F.2d 789, 792-93 (CCPA 1982) (process claim involving undefined "complex system" and indeterminate "factors" drawn from unspecified "testing" not patent-eligible). In contrast, we held one of Abele's dependent claims to be drawn to patent-eligible subject matter where it specified that "said data is X-ray attenuation data produced in a two dimensional field by a computed tomography scanner." Abele, 684 F.2d at 908-09. This data clearly represented physical and tangible objects, namely the structure of bones, organs, and other body tissues. Thus, the transformation of that raw data into a particular visual depiction of a physical object on a display was sufficient to render that more narrowly-claimed process patent-eligible.

We further note for clarity that the electronic transformation of the data itself into a visual depiction in Abele was sufficient; the claim was not required to involve any transformation of the underlying physical object that the data represented. We believe this is faithful to the concern the Supreme Court articulated as the basis for the machine-or-transformation test, namely the prevention of pre-emption of fundamental principles. So long as the claimed process is limited to a practical application of a fundamental principle to transform specific data, and the claim is limited to a visual depiction that represents specific physical objects or substances, there is no danger that the scope of the claim would wholly pre-empt all uses of the principle.

Computer documents represent, and in fact produce, paper. The computer as electronic printing press. Image processing as digital film (or x-ray) developing. Databases as index cards for a library. Software tools as electronic versions of their physical cousins.

Of course, placing the cutting edge of patentability as reliant upon antecedent analogy is oxymoronic. Rejection of new technology unless it corresponds with old. Positively Amish. Welcome to American patent jurisprudence in the 21st century.

Full post as published by The Patent Prospector on January 25, 2009 (boomark / email).