Source: http://www.patents4software.com/category/in-re-nuijten/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 16:10:52+00:00

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While it is not surprising that the Supreme Court affirmed the result in Bilski, it is somewhat surprising (at least to this commentator) that it held that business methods were candidates for patent protection so long as they did not fall within the well established existing judicially created exceptions to patent eligibility “for laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas.” Moreover, the Court held that Section 101 was a “dynamic provision” and not limiting the scope of subject matter that may be patented other than the well established exceptions.
All in all, this is an expansive decision for patentable subject matter and casts doubt on a few of the Federal Circuit’s more recent decisions, In re Nuijten being one of them.
1) The method of hedging risk claimed in Bilski is not a “process” under §101. The concept of hedging risk and the application of that concept to energy markets are not patentable processes but attempts to patent abstract ideas.
2) However, business methods are not categorically outside the scope of Section 101.
3) The machine-or-transformation test is not the sole test for patent eligibility under §101. Section 101 is a dynamic provision and should be read broadly. As such, although the machine-or-transformation test may be a useful and important clue or investigative tool, it is not the sole test for deciding whether an invention is a patent-eligible “process” under §101. In holding to the contrary, the Federal Circuit violated two principles of statutory interpretation: Courts “ ‘should not read into the patent laws limitations and conditions which the legislature has not expressed,’ ” Diamond v. Diehr, 450 U. S. 175, 182, and, “[u]nless otherwise defined, ‘words will be interpreted as taking their ordinary, contemporary, common meaning,’ ” ibid. The Court is unaware of any ordinary, contemporary, common meaning of “process” that would require it to be tied to a machine or the transformation of an article. U. S. 124, 130, and nothing about the section’s inclusion of those other categories suggests that a “process” must be tied to one of them.
4) Nothing in the opinion should be read as endorsing the Federal Circuit’s past interpretations of §101 (e.g., State Street, 49 F. 3d, at 1373), leaving past precedent with little weight going forward.
So, strictly going off of dictionary definitions, and not reading any other constraints into the definition from legislative history or case law, an “article of manufacture” by definition is “a thing put together out of artificial or natural components or parts.” While we can parse “thing” further down, take my word for the fact “thing” is NOT defined to require tangibility or permance, so it can be just about anything.
Pulling this altogether then, is an electromagnetic signal “a thing put together out of artificial or natural components or parts.” Sure seems like it to me, especially since you can kill people with them. Moreover, is there any policy reason to preclude a novel. man-made electromagnetic signal from protection? Not that the In re Nuitjen case mentioned.
In two recent postings I have been exploring the distinction between real and abstract data and how those distinctions play into the question of patentable subject matter under Section 101. My thoughts on this topic included observing that “data” has both real and abstract connotations – it is real when it is processed in a computer (how else could it be processed?) but on the other hand the data typically represents some other entity, be it a physical entity such as a machine part in a CAD system, or an abstract idea, such as a human language word in an electronic dictionary. I further observed that it’s important to keep these distinctions in mind when drafting claims so that at least some claims are limited to processing real data, as opposed to speaking only in terms of abstract data.
14. A signal with embedded supplemental data, the signal being encoded in accordance with a given encoding process and selected samples of the signal representing the supplemental data, and at least one of the samples preceding the selected samples is different from the sample corresponding to the given encoding process.
So, is this good reasoning? Can something “physical” not be “matter” under Section 101? Is electromagnetism not “matter” within the scope of Section 101?
“Nuijten’s position on this issue is correct in a limited way. A “signal” implies signaling—that is, the conveyance of information. To convey information to a recipient a physical carrier, such as an electromagnetic wave, is needed. Thus, in order to be a “signal,” as required by the claim, some carrier upon which the information is embedded is required. See Arrythmia Research Tech., Inc. v. Corazonix Corp., 958 F.2d 1053, 1059 (“The view that there is nothing necessarily physical about ‘signals’ is incorrect.” (quotation marks omitted)).
Well, to answer the question of whether it is logical to say that electromagnetism is “physical” and yet not be “matter” I would have to say yes, so long as you accept that an electromagnetic particle has no mass and therefore cannot be not “matter” by definition.
Interestingly, the In re Nuijten decision introduces yet another facet to the “abstract” vs. “tangible” analysis used to separate subject matter under Section 101: the notion that tangible isn’t enough, that the tangibility has to be found in some kind of “matter” and not just a “force” like electromagnetism, or some other physical realm that has no matter.
So, coming full circle to the issue of whether “data” is real or intangible in nature, the question arises if the Nuijten court would have found the state of a charge in a transistor, or the magnetic state of a disk, to be “matter” or simply an intangible force. I think here the answer is clear: electrical charges in a circuit result from electrons, which do have mass, and magnetic storage is the result of the orientation of magnetic poles of atoms, which do have physical existence and mass. Further, optical storage results in physical changes to the medium. So, where data is stored in these and other physical forms it is “matter” within the logic of Nuijten.
Perhaps most importantly, the lesson to take away from Nuijten is to avoid, at least for now, attempting to claim data that is stored or encoded only into a medium that has no “matter.” If you claim a form of signal that does have “matter”, then In re Nuijten arguably does not apply. For example, a digital form of the signal in Nuijten, stored in a computer memory or on a magnetic disk, does have mass and is matter and therefore outside the prohibition of Nuijten.
As to the question of whether In re Nuijten asked the right questions to arrive at its result, or took too limited a view of what an “article of manufacture” should be under Section 101, tune in later and I will give you my view on that.

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