NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

 

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

IN RE: JASON ARTHUR ZIMMERMAN,

Appellant

______________________ 

2023-1542

______________________ 

Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark 

Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in No. 12/503,494.

______________________ 

Decided: February 9, 2024

______________________ 

JASON A. ZIMMERMAN, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, pro 

se. 

 MEREDITH HOPE SCHOENFELD, Office of the Solicitor, 

United States Patent and Trademark Office, Alexandria, 

VA, for appellee Katherine K. Vidal. Also represented by 

KAKOLI CAPRIHAN, AMY J. NELSON, FARHEENA YASMEEN 

RASHEED. 

 ______________________ 

Before LOURIE, BRYSON, and STARK, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM. 

Jason Arthur Zimmerman appeals the Patent Trial 

and Appeal Board’s (“Board”) decision affirming a patent 

examiner’s rejection of proposed claims 59-80 and 82-132 

Case: 23-1542 Document: 28 Page: 1 Filed: 02/09/2024
2 IN RE: ZIMMERMAN

of U.S. Patent Application No. 12/503,494 (the “’494 application”) for being directed to patent-ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. We affirm.

I 

Mr. Zimmerman filed the ’494 application, seeking a 

patent to be entitled “Method and System for Trading Combinations of Financial Instruments” which generally relates to “electronic trading of financial instruments.” App’x 

49 ¶¶ 1-2. The ’494 application refers to “multi-leg orders,” 

which it describes as trades involving “a collection of two 

or more single leg orders (legs), corresponding to distinct 

financial instruments, that are meant to be executed simultaneously.” Id. at 49 ¶ 5. In order to execute multiple 

legs simultaneously, a system “must monitor bids and offers corresponding to the legs of the order and use the bids 

and offers to compute potential execution prices for the order.” Id. at 51 ¶ 13. According to the application, this presents “significant technical challenges” as multi-leg orders

“involve simultaneous purchases and sales of significant 

numbers of options across numerous legs,” but “it is difficult to guarantee execution of all legs of the order at the 

prices that were used to obtain the potential execution 

price.” Id. The ’494 application purports to solve this problem via a computerized method applying a “combinatorial 

matching algorithm” that mathematically matches each eligible leg of a multi-leg order with a corresponding buy or 

sell order. Id. at 52 ¶ 19; see also id. 65 ¶¶ 97-100. 

Independent claim 59, which the Board treated as representative, recites:

A computer-implemented method improving trading combinations of financial instruments, said 

method comprising implementing the following 

steps in an electronic trading environment where 

each financial instrument in a set of two or more 

financial instruments selected to be made available 

for trading is traded in quantities that are integer 

Case: 23-1542 Document: 28 Page: 2 Filed: 02/09/2024
IN RE: ZIMMERMAN 3

multiples of a respective positive number and 

trades of said each financial instrument are based 

on a respective price per unit order quantity, said 

steps comprising:

receiving, during a first selected time period, 

combination orders to trade financial instruments;

storing each eligible received combination order, wherein a received combination order is an eligible order if it satisfies at least one selected

condition, wherein said at least one selected condition includes the necessary condition that the respective financial instrument specified by each leg 

of an eligible order is in said set; and 

processing, using a computer, eligible orders or 

expanded eligible orders with a combinatorial 

matching algorithm (CMA), wherein said processing begins at a selected time, wherein said 

CMA outputs a matched subcollection of the processed orders; wherein if said CMA is not constrained by limit prices then each order x in said 

subcollection is executed in said environment at its

respective total expanded execution price 

(TEEP(x)); wherein if said CMA is constrained by 

limit prices then said method further comprises obtaining said respective price per unit for said each 

financial instrument and ensuring TEEP(L) is less 

than or equal to TELP(L), where L consists of the 

limit orders in said subcollection and TELP is “total expanded limit price”, and wherein each order x 

in said subcollection is executed in said environment at a respective modified total expanded execution price (MTEEP(x)).

App’x 17. 

Without directly challenging the representativeness of 

claim 59, Mr. Zimmerman would have us instead treat 

Case: 23-1542 Document: 28 Page: 3 Filed: 02/09/2024
4 IN RE: ZIMMERMAN

claim 103 as representative.1 Claim 103, also independent,

recites the method steps of claim 59 performed on “[a] system comprising one or more computers connected to a network” and adds one more step: “obtain[ing], via said 

network and during a selected time period, combination orders to trade financial instruments.” App’x 24-25. 

The examiner rejected all proposed claims as being directed to patent-ineligible subject matter. Applying the 

two-step Alice framework, the examiner concluded that the 

claims were directed to the abstract idea of “improving 

trading combinations of financial instruments,” which is 

among the category of “certain methods of organizing human activity – fundamental economic principles or practices.” App’x 721. On appeal, the Board substantially 

agreed with the examiner’s findings and affirmed the rejection. 

Mr. Zimmerman timely appealed to this court, arguing

that at least some of the rejected claims recite patent-eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. Mr. Zimmerman 

also argues that the examiner failed to establish a prima 

facie rejection and the Board erred in affirming the rejection. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 

§ 1295(a)(4)(A).

II

The patent eligibility inquiry of 35 U.S.C. § 101 is “a 

question of law, which we review de novo.” In re Rudy, 956 

F.3d 1379, 1383 (Fed. Cir. 2020). Our § 101 analysis is governed by the two-step Alice/Mayo framework. See Alice 

Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 573 U.S. 208, 216-24 

(2014); Mayo Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus Labs, Inc., 

566 U.S. 66, 77-80 (2012). At step one, we consider 

“whether the claims at issue are directed to one of [the] 

1 Our decision would be the same regardless of 

whether we focused on claim 59 or 103. 

Case: 23-1542 Document: 28 Page: 4 Filed: 02/09/2024
IN RE: ZIMMERMAN 5

patent-ineligible concepts,” such as an abstract idea. Alice,

573 U.S. at 217. If we determine the claims are directed to 

an ineligible concept, we must proceed to step two, in which 

“we consider the elements of each claim both individually 

and as an ordered combination to determine whether the 

additional elements transform the nature of the claim into 

a patent-eligible application.” Id. (internal quotation 

marks omitted).

III

A 

We agree with the Board and the examiner that all proposed claims that are the subject of this appeal2 are directed to an abstract idea: matching combinations of 

financial instruments through steps of receiving data, storing data, processing data, and executing trades. We have 

repeatedly found claims directed to similar concepts, and 

containing similar steps, to be abstract. See, e.g., Trading 

Techs. Int’l, Inc. v. IBG LLC, 921 F.3d 1084, 1092 (Fed. Cir. 

2019) (“[P]lacing an order based on displayed market information is a fundamental economic practice.”); Elec. Power 

Grp., LLC v. Alstom S.A., 830 F.3d 1350, 1353-54 (Fed. Cir. 

2016) (stating that steps of collecting information and using mathematical algorithms to analyze it are abstract processes); In re TLI Commc’ns LLC Pat. Litig., 823 F.3d 607, 

613 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (finding “classifying and storing digital 

2 Although Mr. Zimmerman limits his eligibility arguments to only some of the claims rejected by the examiner (and subsequently affirmed by the Board), we find it 

unnecessary to determine whether he concedes that all 

other claims are ineligible. As our eligibility analysis 

would be the same whether or not we consider the unargued claims, we choose to address the eligibility of all rejected claims.

Case: 23-1542 Document: 28 Page: 5 Filed: 02/09/2024
6 IN RE: ZIMMERMAN

images in an organized manner” is abstract). We agree 

with the Board that, consistent with our precedent, the 

claims before us are directed to “an abstract idea for which 

computers are invoked merely as a tool.” TecSec, Inc. 

v. Adobe Inc., 978 F.3d 1278, 1293 (Fed. Cir. 2020); see also 

App’x 8 (finding that Mr. Zimmerman’s claims “merely 

use[] the claimed computer elements as a tool to perform 

the abstract idea”).

Mr. Zimmerman contends that his claims may improve 

computer functionality and provide a “technical” solution 

by precluding the risk of nonoptimal trades resulting from 

delays in real-time order matching. Appellant Br. at 4, 9. 

Such a feature does not amount to a technological improvement of the type we have required for a computer software 

claim to avoid being directed to an abstract idea at step 

one. See, e.g., Enfish, LLC v. Microsoft Corp., 822 F.3d 

1327, 1339 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (claims directed to self-referential data table “designed to improve the way a computer 

stores and retrieves data in memory”); McRO, Inc. v. Bandai Namco Games Am. Inc., 837 F.3d 1299, 1314 (Fed. Cir. 

2016) (claims directed to “specific asserted improvement in 

computer animation”). While Mr. Zimmerman repeatedly 

calls his patent a “technological” improvement, the purported improvement he describes deals only with the efficiency of the trade’s matching process, which “makes the 

trader faster and more efficient, not the computer.” Trading Techs., 921 F.3d at 1090; see also SAP Am., Inc. v. InvestPic, LLC, 898 F.3d 1161, 1170 (Fed. Cir. 2018) 

(“[P]atent law does not protect [advances in the realm of 

abstract ideas] no matter how groundbreaking the advance.”). Therefore, we conclude that the claims are directed to an abstract idea.

B 

Turning to step two, we again agree with the Board. 

The claims fail to recite an inventive concept sufficient to 

render the claims patent eligible. 

Case: 23-1542 Document: 28 Page: 6 Filed: 02/09/2024
IN RE: ZIMMERMAN 7

Claim 103, the claim Mr. Zimmerman asks us to focus 

on, includes the limitations of “[a] system comprising one 

or more computers connected to a network, said one or 

more computers programmed and configured to” perform 

the steps we have concluded are abstract, as well as the 

step of “obtain[ing] [orders] via said network.” App’x 24-

25. We agree with the Board’s conclusion that the claimed 

“computer components are all used in a manner that is 

well-understood, routine, and conventional in the field,” 

App’x 9, which is supported by the specification’s description of conventional computer components. See id. at 67 

¶ 104. Mr. Zimmerman points us to no record basis to conclude otherwise. Therefore, the claims are patent ineligible 

under 35 U.S.C. § 101.

IV

Mr. Zimmerman also challenges the sufficiency of the 

Board’s and examiner’s eligibility analyses. His contentions lack merit.

The Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”) requires us 

to “hold unlawful and set aside agency action, findings, and 

conclusions found to be . . . arbitrary, capricious, an abuse 

of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.” 5 

U.S.C. § 706(2)(A). Compliance with the APA requires the 

Board to “provid[e] an administrative record showing the 

evidence on which the findings are based, accompanied by 

the agency’s reasoning in reaching its conclusions,” in such 

a manner that the Board’s “path may reasonably be discerned.” Alacritech, Inc. v. Intel Corp., 966 F.3d 1367, 1370 

(Fed. Cir. 2020) (internal quotation marks omitted). Here, 

the Board met its APA obligations. It applied the proper 

legal standard – the two-step Alice framework – and made 

clear it was relying on intrinsic evidence (the application’s 

specification) to find that the claims recite only well-understood, routine, and conventional activities previously 

known in the art.

Case: 23-1542 Document: 28 Page: 7 Filed: 02/09/2024
8 IN RE: ZIMMERMAN

With regard to the examiner, Mr. Zimmerman contends that she failed to provide an explanation satisfying 

the standards of 35 U.S.C. § 132, which requires the PTO 

to “notify the applicant” of a rejection by “stating the reasons for [the] rejection . . . together with such information 

and references as may be useful in judging of the propriety 

of continuing the prosecution of his application.” “Section 

132 is violated when a rejection is so uninformative that it 

prevents the applicant from recognizing and seeking to 

counter the grounds for rejection.” Chester v. Miller, 906 

F.2d 1574, 1578 (Fed. Cir. 1990); see also In re Jung, 637 

F.3d 1356, 1362 (Fed. Cir. 2011) (describing examiner’s obligation to “explain[] the shortcomings it perceives so that 

the applicant is properly notified and able to respond”) (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted). The office 

action about which Mr. Zimmerman complains, and on 

which his appeal to the Board and us are based, met this 

statutory requirement by informing him his claims were 

ineligible under § 101 because they were directed to an abstract idea – “improving trading combinations of financial 

instruments” – and failed to cite anything significantly 

more. App’x 719-35. 

V 

We have considered Mr. Zimmerman’s remaining arguments and find them unpersuasive. For the forgoing reasons, we affirm the Board’s decision.

AFFIRMED

COSTS

No costs.

Case: 23-1542 Document: 28 Page: 8 Filed: 02/09/2024