Source: https://patentlyo.com/patent/2015/03/activision-blizzard-section.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 00:30:07+00:00

Document:
The highly-anticipated Alice Corp. v CLS Bank case was widely expected to clarify the application of Section 101 to computer-implemented inventions and many expected the decision would answer the contentious question of whether software is eligible for patent protection. Instead, the Supreme Court issued a relatively narrow ruling that cast doubt on the eligibility of most business methods, but suggested that software-based inventions that “improve the functioning of the computer itself” or “effect an improvement in any other technology or technical field” would likely be eligible.
Now lower courts are beginning to apply the Alice and the Supreme Court’s distinction between abstract business practices and technological inventions. To date, the bulk of the district court decisions have dealt with so-called business method patents that recite a business practice or economic concept combined with a token recitation of implementation on a computer. District courts have correctly invalidated these patents under 101 in the wake of Alice and Bilski. But we have also seen some troubling decisions where Alice has been misapplied to invalidate patents directed to real technology, rather than abstract business concepts.
Docket Navigator data suggests that in 2015, we could see more than 150 patent cases in district courts, arguing the patents are invalid on 101 grounds – and if the current trends continue, the patent would be invalidated in as many as 111 of those cases. These trend lines are troubling. With more than $50 billion in software research and development incentives at stake, it is imperative that the Federal Circuit make a course correction and send a clear signal that software-based technology is eligible for patent protection.
Fortunately, the Federal Circuit has an opportunity to provide much-needed guidance to the lower courts in the upcoming McRO v. Activision Blizzard appeal. The McRO patents describe a computerized process for “automated rules-based use of morph targets and delta sets for lip-synchronized three-dimensional animation” that was a significant improvement over computer-aided processes previously used in the industry.
As we argue in our brief, reaching this counterintuitive (and seemingly counterfactual) conclusion required fundamental errors in applying both steps of the Alice analysis.
Step One – Are the claims directed to an abstract idea?
Clearly, this claim describes a concrete, real-world innovation that solves the difficult problem of accurately replicating the human face and speech in CGI and animation.
So how did the lower court conclude that it recites nothing more than an abstract idea? It did so by reversing the order of Alice’s two analytical steps and by collapsing them into a single inquiry.
Step Two – Does the claim contain additional elements that ensure the patent amounts to “significantly more” than the underlying abstract idea?
The lower court’s application of step-two is equally misguided and problematic. In step two of the Alice test, the court must assess whether the “additional elements” (i.e., any element beyond the abstract idea itself) places meaningful limitations on the scope of the claim.
In describing step two, the Supreme Court stated in Mayo that “well-understood, routine, conventional activity” previously used in the field “is normally not sufficient to transform an unpatentable [abstract idea] into a patent-eligible application . . . .” In other words, it is not generally “enough” simply to append routine, conventional steps – described at a high level of generality – to the abstract idea.
Unfortunately, the lower court fundamentally misinterprets this statement to mean that only novel elements (rather than all “additional elements”) should be considered for purposes of the “significantly more” analysis. The court then proceeds (yet again) to read all of the additional elements out of the claim because they lack sufficient novelty. Unsurprisingly, once all of the additional limitations recited in the claim are stripped away, all that is left is the abstract idea, leading the court to conclude that the claim fails the “significantly more” test.
This approach lacks any basis in the case law and ignores the fundamental difference between what is “known” in the prior art and what is “conventional” in industry practice. For something to be conventional it must not only be known, but widely-adopted. Put simply, the fact that space travel is “known” in human society by no means makes it a “conventional” practice.
The Federal Circuit must be clear and decisive in nipping this in the bud. In deciding McRO, not only should they overrule the lower court’s erroneous conclusion, but they should take care to provide additional guidance regarding the correct application of the Alice test to avoid similar misapplication in other cases. This would provide much-needed clarity and certainty to patent holders and industries that rely on technology and software patents, shoring up our economic competitiveness and maintaining more than 2.5 million American jobs.
BSA’s members include: Adobe, Altium, Apple, ANSYS, Autodesk, Bentley Systems, CA Technologies, CNC/Mastercam, Dell, IBM, Intuit, Microsoft, Minitab, Oracle, PTC, salesforce.com, Siemens PLM Software, Symantec, Tekla, The MathWorks, and Trend Micro.
Excuse me but when in Alice did the Supreme Court cast doubt on business methods?
And how could doubt be cast on business methods when the Court has never even defined a business method? In reality there is no such thing as an abstract business method. Abstract concepts and ideas are patent ineligible. Business methods, with or without software, are just fine.
McRo needs to advance a cogent “Integration Analysis” if they want their claims to be upheld as patent eligible subject matter. Because as the Supreme Court of The United States, has said on more than one occasion, “Integrated claims pose no threat of “preemption” tying up abstract ideas, or laws of nature, and therefore remain patent eligible.
I was going to post something about this, but I’m just too busy getting software patents issued for my clients. The Alice decision is just one of Rowling’s boggarts.
Noticed you didn’t say “enforcing” for my clients.
Here’s the real problem with the Alice case for those who prosecute patents. I’m looking at a case where the idea is to reduce intermodulation effects of a transmitted signal. The claims have been allowed, with no Alice rejections. The question I have is whether these claims — in a subsequent litigation — would pass the Alice test. And I have no idea what the answer is. None.
At least with “machine or transformation” or “concrete, useful, and tangible”, I could ascertain whether the claims were patentable under 101. With Alice, I cannot determine whether these claims are patentable under 101.
Furthermore, I can’t even state what could be added to the claims in order to pass muster under Alice (assuming I think we might need something else in the claims, even as a dependent claim, just in case). One could argue that reducing intermodulation effects of a transmitted signal only operates on the signal and does not improve the functionality of the “computer” itself. If that’s the case, there could be nothing I could add to the claims that would make the claims patentable under Alice.
How do I counsel my client in light of Alice? I can’t do it.
Wait wait, so you cannot counsel your client [to allowance] in light of Alice? Maybe you missed the point of Alice: to get the garbage you’re trying to patent out of the patent system?
6, do you examine applications per an objective reading of Alice and the USPTO’s Guidelines or per your anti-patent bias?
Serious question. Your apparent wholehearted adoption of MM’s soliloquies, and particularly the parts that aren’t actual law, is troubling given what you’re paid to do by the USPTO.
I can’t imagine your superiors would be too happy with these statements. Just food for thought. Thank goodness for anonymity!
I once interviewed an attorney and asked him whether he thinks a particular claim he drafted was allowable. When he protested that it was not a fair question, then I knew he could not make a straight face argument in favor of the claim’s allowance and that particular claim was probably garbage.
Though I could hardly fault an attorney for not being able to argue in favor of 101 eligibility, given that the patent bar + Fed Cir + PTO were too busy complaining about the Supreme Court’s 101 precedents rather than sitting down and reading between the details of Benson, Flook, Diehr, Bilski, Mayo, Myriad, and Alice to come up with an organized guideline.
Brosef, I wrote the “Alice” standard years before the decision even came down. It’s nothing but Benson restated 60 years later. So yes, I “examine applications per an objective reading of Alice and the USPTO’s Guidelines” in so far as the guidelines are in accord with the law. And they are for the most part, they’re a tiny rough around the edges but that’s not going to affect most 101 determinations, and I only do like 2 101’s a year max.
That’s not an “anti-patent bias” lol. I’ve issued more patents than you I bet.
My superiors, especially the ones I’ve had before the current one, are wayyyy on board. The current one I haven’t really had need to bring up 101 with.
You’ve already perform Step one under Alice, by concluding that your claim recites an idea for reducing intermodulation effects of a transmitted signal.
Now, perform step two and ask yourself “What else is there”?
(1) Are the steps recited therein for reducing intermodulation effects conventional? Conventional steps are steps that anyone who wants to reduce the intermodulation effect must necessarily use. For example, generating a signal for transmission, modulate the signal however developed, storing the signal, or using an antenna to transmit a signal.
(2) Are the steps recited therein for reducing intermodulation effects purely obvious?
The Supreme Court held that 101 inquiry sometimes overlap 102 inquiry. Mayo, 132 S. Ct. at 1304. This means that 101 inquiry sometimes reach the same conclusion as 102 inquiry (i.e., it is sometimes possible for something that is not “new” under 101 to be not “novel” under 102). This does not mean 101 should be conflated with 102/103. In fact, the Supreme Court held that 101 inquiries must precede 102/103 inquiries. Flook, 437 US at 593 (“The obligation to determine what type of discovery is sought to be patented must precede the determination of whether that discovery is, in fact, new or obvious”). Further, “novelty” of any steps in a process or even of the process itself is of no relevance in 101 inquiries. See Diehr, 450, US at 188-89 .
If we are to make 101 inquiries before we could actually inquire whether something is actually “novel” under 102 and “nonobvious” under 103, then how could we declare certain combination of steps as well known or obvious when making 101 inquiries?
I noticed that in Bilski and Alice, the Supreme Court pointed to textbooks to illustrate that hedging and intermediated settlements are “fundamental economic practice long prevalent in our system of commerce”. But note that the textbook or sources cited by the Supreme Court to support that point are not prior art. Rather, the textbook and the sources were useful to make a point: if these concepts could be found in a textbook or historical studies, then they are undoubtedly fundamental ideas.
Rather, when the Supreme Court made 101 inquiries, the statements about “purely conventional”, “purely obvious”, “routine”, “long practiced” are not prompts to make finding of facts under 102/103. Instead, these findings are relevant to determine whether the additional steps are utterly undisguised attempt to patent a 101 exception.
For example, no one needs to make a 102/103 inquiry to know that displaying the signal on a TV screen, or using the signal to drive a sound speaker, or transmitting the signal to a distant recipient are purely obvious. They are as common place of a knowledge as the sky is blue, what comes up must come down under Earth’s gravity, the planets of Solar System orbits the sun etc.
If you think that the additional steps for reducing intermodulation effect is so commonly practiced and known to everyone, without even making a 102/103 inquiry, then the steps are purely obvious.
If you find that the claimed combination of steps are not (1) conventional and (2) not purely obvious, then make the arguments based on those findings in Court in addition to context.
Arguments about context is important as these arguments give the court a point of reference to treat the claims in the most favorable light (Fed Cir still presumes patent validity). I bet the counsel in Diehr made a strong argument on how applying Arrhenius equation using a particular combination of steps, even if the individual step is well known or the combination is well known, solves a practical industrial problem of overcuring / undercuring rubber.
If you do at least these, then you’ve made a strong argument for your client you’ve done your job.
I think the whole crossing over between 101 and 102/103 directly results from the S.Ct.’s unwillingness to simply hold that eligibility should be decided by an industrial arts test.
I don’t think the Supreme Court intended this cross over. Rather, Flook and Diehr both prohibited such cross over.
My theory is that “new” in 101 is ambiguous (assuming language in statutes are not superfluous) because 102 and 103 set forth the requirement of “novelty” and “obviousness”. The Supreme Court exploited this ambiguity in 101 and read “new” to exclude laws of Nature, Natural Phenomena, and Abstract Ideas as an exercise in Constitutional Avoidance: to interpret patent statute to exclude subject matter that, if granted an exclusive right, would cover subject matter that inventors did not discover and thus obstruct the progress of science and useful art. Myriad, 133 S. Ct. at 2116 (“As the Court has explained, without this exception, there would be considerable danger that the grant of patents would “tie up” the use of such tools and thereby “inhibit future innovation premised upon them.””).
One could argue that reducing intermodulation effects of a transmitted signal only operates on the signal and does not improve the functionality of the “computer” itself.
What makes you think that changing the physical characteristics of a transmitted signal (as opposed to changing its informational content) isn’t enough? Unless your claim says no more than “reduce intermodulation effects of a transmitted signal,” you’re likely just fine under 101.
Put another way, “improving the characteristics of a communication signal” might well be an “abstract idea.” But once you start reciting steps that are performed on an actual signal, you’ve gone to a specific application of that abstract idea, which, by definition, means the claim is not directed solely to an abstract idea.
It’s really not as bad as some pretend to think.
PatentBob, what you claim seems on its face eligible unless you claim is functional at the point of novelty — then there might be a problem. How Wu’s opinion will be handled by the Federal Circuit is still TBD.
The improved modulation of a transmitted signal seems to be exactly the kind of thing that should be eligible.
Criminy Ned – do I have I ask you about that section of Benson that states “we do not so hold” yet again?
Don’t you ever tire of your errors?
This question goes out to MM or anyone else on the “categorically ineligble” side of the info-processing/software debate: Do you think that Diehr was decided correctly, why or why not?
I primarily practice in the oil/gas and mining arts, so I have little skin in this game, but I am working on an application for a “process” that, like Diehr, involves algorithmic control of other, claimed physical components (think pumps, compressors, and the like). I do wonder whether, if the pendulum keeps swinging along its current trajectory, will Diehr-like claims soon be held ineligible.
Malcolm is already on record that Diehr was wrongly decided.
Ned is “on record” for ig noring the particular PON of Diehr: a software program purely using the Arrhenius equation and no new physical equipment.
And yes, it is worth noting that even prior to Diehr, the result of perfect cures was in fact old.
I wish you the best of luck PG in our replay of history prior to 1952.
I think Diehr’s holding is pretty borderline, but I think there is a good chance it would be decided differently today.
Now, looking back, there is a good chance that all of that now would be classified as conventional, or insignificant post solution activity.
The Arrhenius equation is used in part to estimate the rate of chemical reaction. Should we allow applicant’s to take this equation out of the public domain because they found a useful application for the formula? I say no, but opinions obviously differ.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about, quite frankly.
Whether Diehr would be decided differently today is irrelevant. SCOTUS considered Diehr and said it passed the Alice test. Bunch of old conventional hardware well-known in the field + use of an abstract idea (i.e., equation) to operate those old components = OK under Alice. It’s not that hard. Still waiting for a non-GP computer claim to be found invalid. Pretty tough to do that w/ Diehr’s facts.
While certain mouthpieces squawk otherwise, there is no novel hardware requirement for eligibility and software isn’t dead (by SCOTUS’s own words, actually). SCOTUS didn’t implement one in Alice, and Diehr certainly didn’t have novel hardware.
I’m still waiting for MM to point out that novelty requirement so we can put this debate to rest and go back to squabbling about other inconsequential sh*t, but he hasn’t, won’t, and can’t. Classic case of those who speak the loudest have the least to say. *Shrugs*.
How do you take the Arrhenius equation out of the public domain by claiming the useful application for the Arrhenius equation? Won’t such a patent claim only preclude said useful application for the Arrhenius equation? If someone else comes up with another useful application thereof unobvious from said useful application, the unobvious and useful application of Arrhenius would not have infringed the patent claim. And that pretty much sum up the Supreme Court’s utility for 101 inquiry: limiting exclusive rights to only what the inventors discovered and nothing more so as to promote the progress of science and useful art.
“Now, looking back, there is a good chance that all of that now would be classified as conventional, or insignificant post solution activity”.
In Mayo, the steps of telling doctors to gather data from which they may draw an inference in light of correlations set forth by certain laws of nature are well-understood, routine, and conventional activity already engaged in by the scientific community. This is because anyone who wants to make use of the laws of nature must first administrate the drug and measure the resulting metabolite concentrations such that the steps amounted to nothing more than an instruction to doctors to apply the applicable laws of nature when treating their patients. Mayo, 132 S. Ct. at 1298.
In that portion of the decision in Mayo, the Supreme Court took pain to point out the rule set forth in Diehr that a new combination of steps in a process may be patentable even though all the constituents of the combination were well known and in common use before the combination was made.
In essence, the Supreme Court rolled their eyes on barely disguised attempt to claim 101 exceptions with “apply it” by reciting (1) conventional steps such as having a computer storing an algorithm into the CPU in order to calculate the results using the algorithm (any computer that needs to do calculation using the algorithm must necessarily store the algorithm into its RAM in order to apply the algorithm) or (2) insignificant pre/post salutation steps such as gathering particular variables for an algorithm or attach the calculated results onto an email and transmit it over the network to a recipient. Flook, 437 US at 590 (“The notion that post-solution activity, no matter how conventional or obvious in itself, can transform an unpatentable principle into a patentable process exalts form over substance”; note that this statement simply refutes the blanket argument that applying a 101 exception in any manner, no matter how conventional or obvious, is enough for patent eligibility. This does not per se exclude patent eligibility for application of 101 exception using well known and obvious steps).
But, applying an algorithm or a math formula with a new combination of well known and commonly used steps may be patentable. In fact, even an application of a law of nature or mathematical formula to a known process may well be deserving of patent protection. Diehr, 450 US at 187-88.
For example, the individual component steps of (1) installing rubber in a press, (2) closing the mold, (3) constantly determining the temperature of the mold, (4) constantly recalculating the appropriate cure time through the use of the Arrhenius equation, and (5) automatically opening the press at the proper time may be individually known.
However, the combination of these steps, when used to apply the Arrhenius equation on a computer, results in a more efficient solution of an industrial problem by lessening the possibility of “overcuring” and “undercuring” is not bared at the threshold by 101. Diehr, 450 US 187-88. Even if the combination of (1)-(5) are well known in the industry, they are still not barred at the threshold by 101 when a computer could apply the Arrhenius equation with steps (1)-(5) to lessen the problem of overcuring and undercuring.
In sum, even if decided today under Alice Two Steps, Diehr would still be patent eligible because its process applies the Arrhenius equation using steps that are not purely conventional or purely obvious; i.e., the combination of steps applying the equation is not something that is routine and long practiced in the art.
The point I’m making is more 103 than 101. The equation is used to calculate the rate of chemical reaction.
How can adding the Arrhenius equation to a known process…to calculate the rate of chemical reaction…EVER be non obvious? Although I do think it overlaps with 101.
You appear confused by your conflating.
Turnaround – do you have a technical background? I mean real world experience and not just a degree (if that)?
Thanks for the straight answer.
Peanut, Diehr’s holding remains unclear given that the court stated that the alleged invention also included the use of thermocouples inside the mold to actively measure temperature – something that allegedly had not been done before.
But one thing is very clear – the presence in the claim of unpatentable subject matter such as mathematics will not categorically make the claim ineligible.
But the case has come to be an example where the ineligible subject matter, mathematics here, is applied in a conventional process, a process that passes the MOT, to improve it.
Now that we are un-moored from the “clue” that is MOT, I’m afraid it will be difficult for the courts to define a consistent test for software/info-processing eligibility (apart from categorical ineligibility). I sympathize with other practitioners, like PatentBob above, just trying to figure out how to best advise clients in this area. I agree that the “I know it when I see it” test is unsatisfactory, but unfortunately I think it’s here to stay unless Congress steps in. The S.Ct. doesn’t appear willing to provide any meaningful, broadly-applicable guidance.
Peanut, I would look at Diehr and Alappat as good examples of the use of math in the larger context to improve in the one a conventional process that passed the MOT, and in the other, a display.
Yeah, because it’s a process of vulcanizing rubber and did not seek to tie up the Arrhenius equation.
To play devil’s advocate, couldn’t the whole vulcanizing part be characterized as conventional post-solution activity (Goodyear and Hancock first vulcanized when, ca. 1840?).
Are you not advocating for a technical or industrial arts test? If so, that’s fine, but the S.Ct. does not appear willing to call that spade a spade.
They are not willing because they lack the constitutional authority to write patent law that way in the first instance.
And why not? Before you come asking me that question, please, take a gander at the claim itself.
I’m on board with that, though no, I do not specifically go out of my way to advocate for that.
If it was my idea, that wouldn’t be a judge made “test”, that would be a statutory requirement made to comply with the constitution (maybe after some id iot applicant/patentee forced the USSC’s hand to strike down 101 as unconstitutional to get congress to get off its a rse). But that is unlikely to be required, or really needed.
You do realize that such is not a patent law writing that the judiciary has been allocated authority under the constitution to engage in, right?
How disappointing as you of all people should have been front and center with the “just limiting to a particular technical field does not save you” line.
Instead, you post the opposite…?
That’s because it wasn’t “just limiting to a particular technical field”. I’ve been over and over this with you on the facts anon. And now the USSC reviewed your take on the facts when IEEE submitted their amicus in Alice iirc. They find against your take on the facts (just like they did when Diehr was decided) and for my take on the facts. I’m sorry, but the facts in Diehr indicate that their particular method of vulcanizing rubber, complete with being able to get the readings and auto-opening and all that, was likewise novel over the closest art o record. But you’re never going to believe that, no matter how many courts tell you otherwise, and that is why you’ll still harp on this “technical field” line. Maybe if you had a background in the useful arts you’d understand Diehr better, though it was embarrassing for IEEE themselves to mistake the facts similarly.
You are contradicting yourself again 6 – specifically your pet notion of “pre-emption” and the notion that the Court has indicated that NO sub-set of a particular technical field would do.
All that you are doing here is spinning out gobbledyg00k – the technical field IS the field of vulcanizing rubber.
I have a nasty feeling that any patent that specifies rules without specifying what the rules are that produce the new result is headed for the trash bin.
I suspect that there is an important underlying discovery, but that it has somehow not found its way into the underlying claims. That being so the Federal circuit is more likely than not to send the patent to the above indicated place.
Perhaps we are being too ambitious. The most useful claim scope is not necessarily the broadest that can be got through the Paten Office on a Friday afternoon, but is instead the broadest that can stand up to serious challenge.
‘morph weight set’: A set of numbers which describe how to ‘stretch’ a shape, for example how to stretch a circle into an oval or how to stretch a picture of relaxed lips into a picture of lips making an ‘oooooh’ sound.
‘phoneme sequence’: a set of sounds that lips make. For example ‘pah’ ‘te’ ‘en’ ‘lee’ ‘oo’ is a phoneme sequence.
‘transition parameters’: Lips are shaped one way for ‘leee’ sounds and a different way for ‘ooo’ sounds. For example look in the mirror and say ‘Patently-O’. When your lips changed shape from ‘leee’ to ‘oooo’ they went through a transition. The transition parameters describe the change.
The above 4 things are all ‘hard’ to create requiring lots of research and experimentation. But the claim does say how to create any of the hard things. Instead it describes the order to do the hard things in to feed information from one step to the next.
Correction: The above 4 things are all ‘hard’ to create requiring lots of research and experimentation. But the claim does not say how to create any of the hard things. Instead it describes the order to do the hard things in to feed information from one step to the next.
Slashdot, if I understand the facts correctly, the rules on how to do lipsticking were old and notorious and that the only thing new in the claim is the limited concept of automating that which was formerly done by hand.
Now, if the claim were to proscribe something really novel in terms of technology, then, of course the use of old or notorious rules per se would be entirely beside the point.
Have you morfed the Courts “notoriously old” into old and notorious? If so, why the transition and transformation?
Les, good catch there. Almost laughed.
Paul, if I understand the district court opinion, everything in the claim is old but for the use of a machine to automate that which was hitherto done by hand. Everything.
Had the process be new in any regard, then the claimed subject matter may have been enough per Diehr.
state, wherein each delta set is the [set of vectors] from each vertex on the neutral (reference) model to each vertex on a model of another mouth position.” Rulings on Claim Constr., Docket No. 298-1 at 9.
However, the patents themselves teach that the prior art includes using morph targets that correspond to phonemes and calculating delta sets that contain the vectors from each vertex on the neutral model to the morph target. ‘576 Patent at 1:44-62.
This is witch trial talk. How about prior art and reasons to combine along with the ladders of abstraction. You know, real stuff. Not imaginary nonsense generated by judges to justify striking the match to burn the witch.
The more any attorney reads this nonsense the more he/she should be offended.
Sheer rubbish. Offensive nonsense that was started by Benson and should be removed from the record of American jurisprudence.
Why is that a nasty feeling? If you don’t disclose rules, how have you advanced the art? With the idea that rules can be used. The same is true of software in general btw – without disclosure and claiming particular algorithms, the claim to functional code is just the idea that code can be to achieve a goal.
I suspect that there is an important underlying discovery, but that it has somehow not found its way into the underlying claims.
The “how” ought to be obvious right – if you claim particular rules they will be designed around (because the invention is not that great). If you claim the concept of USING rules, well that can’t be designed around, can it?
That being so the Federal circuit is more likely than not to send the patent to the above indicated place.
Oh, you give the federal circuit too much credit my friend. I expect a reversal followed by a supreme court reversal.
The most useful claim scope is not necessarily the broadest that can be got through the Paten Office on a Friday afternoon, but is instead the broadest that can stand up to serious challenge.
Paul, do you agree or disagree that a claim that says nothing else but to automate a known process formally done by hand is abstract?
Does it make any difference if that known process is described in detail?
Over here it was held, if my memory is right by Fletcher-Moulton L.J. (as he then was) that it was clearly obvious to automate a known process. The opinion was in British United Shoe and is more than 100 years old.
It is, I think, arguably an abstraction if all that is specified is automatic means without specifying any of the elements that enable the claimed thing to proceed automatically. Rules, arguably, are also an abstraction unless the content of the rules is sufficiently specified.
Our skill should be to create broad and useful claims that correctly identify the key technical advance and cannot be dismissed as mere abstractions whilst providing useful protection to our clients.
Speaking of abstract ideas, what about this idea: “Video dock for portable media player” from patent 7599177 issued 12/12/2007.
Is the phrase “Video dock for portable media player” an abstract idea?
Does the claim add ‘something more’?
a projection module operably linked to the communication interface and configured to receive video information from the portable media player via the communication interface, and to project a video image derived from the video information away from the docking station onto a viewing surface.
Oh boy here comes Slashdot with his “surely you’re not going to tell me this isn’t eligible either!” shtick. Because everybody knows that without that junky patent claim we’d never have “video docks” and the economy would implode!
s the phrase “Video dock for portable media player” an abstract idea?
Wrong question, Slashdot. Pay close attention now because this is really, really, really hard for you, apparently. Connecting information storage devices to displays is really, really old. “Portable” devices were also old as of the time of filing of this application. Docking was old. What’s new here? Well apparently this idea of being “configured to receive video information”.
Video information is an abstraction. The claim purports to protect the kind of information that can be displayed by old otherwise unpatentable technology. Hence: ineligible claim.
That’s how the analysis works. It’s pretty straightforward. We know why it’s hard for you: you just love shiny things like “docking stations” and you have drunk so much patent kool aid that you can’t separate the existence of those things from the granting of junky functionally-claimed patents covering the kinds of information that is stored, processed and communicated by such things.
Anyway, try to focus on the awesome claims at issue in this case. “Rules”, baby! Yes we must grant patents on “rules” because otherwise nobody will try to improve computer animation or anything else involving computers. How do we know that? Some directly invested, self-interested person told us so!
This doesn’t even get a 101 rejection at the PTO, and I’d buy a ticket to watch you lose in court. Novel hardware is not a requirement for eligibility under 101. If you believe it to be, I’d love for you to show me where the Supreme Court or the Federal Circuit said so.
You really need to stop touting your opinion as to what you desire the law to be as the law. It’s misleading and borderline unethical. Truly. I can’t believe you think it’s OK to do that.
Remember: neither did Prometheus’ claims, which covered a method of thinking about a new “rule” for administering a drug. What’s your point?
you really need to stop touting your opinion as to what you desire the law to be as the law.
Because some guy on the Internets says so! You’re hilarious.
Mr. Right, I know you are right, which means that there may be something very wrong at the PTO.
That’s your analysis? Good luck, friend.
Thanks! Good luck pretending that “portable” is a meaningful limitation and good luck pretending that component parts (screens; hard drives) weren’t understood to be separable at the time that junk patent was filed.
How much kool-aid does your stomach hold anyway? Good thing that the patent doesn’t use the term “wireless”! That might be too much technology for anyone to digest without his/her head exploding. Wowee zowee! Oh wait — my docking station is in my robot car. It’s not conventional! It’s configured to flash a message when I speed! Can I haz patent now?
Lots of words, yet no substance. About right. Fun!
Au contraire mon frere MM! I do not like this claim from a policy point of view. In 2007 projectors were big and expensive. It makes no sense to try to sell a docking station projector. However if there is a breakthrough in projector technology (making them cheap and cheerful) anytime between 2007 and 2024 then you can profit!
It also seems to indicate that if you are in the docking station business and someone invents a new kind of display that you should apply for a patent immediately. For example take the above claim and replace ‘video information’ with ‘3D sound field information’, ‘3D video information’, ‘subsonic sound information’ or ‘Virtual reality display and control information’. These will all be a lot of work to actually implement in a docking station, involving plenty of research and experimentation. But I do not need to worry about that because I can patent the abstract obvious flow of the information through the new system rather than doing any hard work. (Or I could of, I think I just made these into prior art…).
The idea is to think of an idea, plugin some generic language and apply for a patent without leaving you desk.
You seem to implying that the application has an enablement or written description problem.
There’s a statute for that.
It’s just that it is not 101.
Physically connecting the a), b) and c).
What is left in the claim is the flow of video through a), b) and c) and given everything else how could that not be enabled?
Well if you agree that its enabled, they why do you think there is undone hard work?
Slashdot Reader f you are in the docking station business and someone invents a new kind of display that you should apply for a patent immediately. For example take the above claim and replace ‘video information’ with ‘3D sound field information’, ‘3D video information’, ‘subsonic sound information’ or ‘Virtual reality display and control information’. These will all be a lot of work to actually implement in a docking station, involving plenty of research and experimentation. But I do not need to worry about that because I can patent the abstract obvious flow of the information through the new system rather than doing any hard work. (Or I could of, I think I just made these into prior art…).
Ah, so you do have some understanding of how the game is being played. Congrats! Recognize also that you need not be in the “docking station business” at all to play this game. All you need to be “in” is the patent speculation and/or assertion business.
And there are worse claims than this one out there. Far worse. With less technology and even more emphasis on the information.
Plus I know of a website where you can find stories about all the latest technology so its easy to find ideas for patent speculation! I won’t reveal the name though.
And let me guess: the big companies responsible for that “latest technology” are endless disparaged by the same website as being “not innovative”.
Thank goodness there’s nothing transparently sleazy about that website.
The inventors herein were born yesterday and are thus unaware of the long history of public demand for larger screens or the equally ancient technology that allows information to be transmitted from one device to a larger screen.
Look elsewhere in our broken patent system for claims covering this same “technology” performed “wirelessly”, or including a magical “processor confiured to translate the information into different formats”, or involving “access rules” of some kind. Super techo stuff!
Between the five of them, how many patents were filed and granted on the use of “rules” to animate stuff? I’m pretty sure the answer is “ZILCHO” but I’m happy to be wrong about that.
I’m also pretty sure that these people deduced “rules” about animation from each other and each of them and the public benefitted from the sharing of those rules. And lo and behold the economy didn’t collapse because of the lack of patent protection for those rules. Go figure.
I suppose we’ve “progressed” so far now, thanks to our awesome patent system, that the typical person who comes up with new “rules” now requires that a patent pacifier be stuck in his mouth 24 hours a day for 20 years or else WAAAH!
On this point, I think you are correct.
Because they didn’t use rules, they used their artistic gut feeling.
That’s why the claims rule base approach was deemed novel and not obvious and granted a patent!
They used rules. They used logic. They processed information using rules and logic and the results of that information processing appear in the animation that people see. Were slide rules inovlved at any point? I wouldn’t be surprised.
How many patents issued on methods of “configuring old slide rules” to perform calculations on specific data types? How many patents issued on methods of “configuring old protractors” to draw certain types of objects?
Answer: few, if any. And somehow the economy didn’t collapse and innovation continued apace. Seems to me that adults were just more “grown up” back then and didn’t need to beg the PTO for a patent pacifier to s0ck on for the next 20 years before proceeding with their next data processing innovation. And then something changed. And surprise! it involved patent attorneys and grifters who realized that they didn’t need any technical skill at all to make millions of dollars off the patent system if the PTO was handing out patents on “rules”.
Is your argument that because “rules” might have been used at one time in animation, then any patent using “rules” in animation therefore invalid?
No, that’s not my argument.
My argument is that ineligible, abstract “rules” for information processing do not become eligible merely because a computing device is involved. That’s because computers, like slide rules and protractors, are old devices which apply rules to whatever information-processing context the user desires. In that regard, “rules” are the “building blocks” that make those devices worth owning.
Rules were certainly used *all the time* during the history of animation and they are still being used today and they will be used forever. The use of rules for processing information in all informational contexts is quite old and typically arises simultaneously with the conception of the “new” informational context. That’s because, well, the use of at least some elementary form of logic is a fundamental aspect of possessing an organ that processes information.
I think people have written about this in books. Remember books? They were portable manufactures configured to store useful non-obvious information in a manner retrievable upon an appropriate output signal from a user. They were important to people once. Oddly, nobody ever thought that granting millions of patents covering the classes of information content in those manufactures was a great idea. Yet somehow progress in communicating new information with books proceeded wonderfully. Go figure.
MM, there is a difference in writing rules in a book and using rules in a machine to do something physical where the something physical is modified and improved by the application of a specific rule.
I think the problem here mainly is in the abstractness of the rules. The use of rules to do something is notoriously old and sufficiently abstract that this cannot be the point of novelty. Yet the opinion seemed to suggest that it was the only thing new in the entire method.
This claim is almost like saying I am inventing a new method of cooking an egg that differs from the old method by using a machine, and where the rules, well known, are coded into a database.
There is nothing new here whatsoever except the basic idea of automating a notoriously old process with the process itself unmodified with any new invention.
Recall the discussion of Wyeth v. Stone, 1 Story, R 273 at 285 in Morse. Morse stated that this case was directly on point.
First of all, the specification in Wyeth describe two new machines for cutting blocks of ice. But the claim was contained in two sentences and this posed a problem. Curtis summarizes Wyeth as follows: “The patentee summed up his claim as follows: “It is claimed as new, to cut ice of a uniform size, by means of an apparatus worked by any other power than human. The invention of this art, as well as of the particular method of the application of the principle, are claimed by the subscriber.” It was held that the first clause of this claim had undertaken to cover an art or principle in the abstract, namely, the cutting of ice of a uniform size by means of an apparatus worked by any other power than human; which would render the patent void, unless a disclaimer had been filed in season to save it as a patent for the machines or machine which constituted the particular method embraced by the second clause of the claim. Certainly if it was necessary to construe this as a claim to the invention and appropriation of an art, being the art of cutting ice by any other than human power, it is an indisputable proposition that it covered no possible subject of a patent privilege. But the first clause of this claim was probably mere surplusage, intended only to state that the patentee was the first person who had invented an apparatus for cutting ice of a uniform size, and that it mattered not by what power the apparatus was moved along the ice. The second clause is the one in which the invention resided; and this appeared on the face of the claim to be a particular method of applying what the patentee miscalled an art or principle, it being in truth no art or principle whatever to cut ice by any other than human power. In other words, the patent was a patent for an apparatus to be used in cutting ice….
>The use of rules to do something is notoriously old and >sufficiently abstract that this cannot be the point of novelty.
“Follow your gut” is a) a rule and b) described in as much definition as the actual rules claimed are, which is why there is a problem with the claim.
Utterly bizarre that MM gets on this blog and then basically just emotes his feelings about claims each day. Real patent law is 102/103/112. Not MM whining.
Big picture: US innovation tops in the world. These patents represent that innovation. Somehow that innovation must be in these patents. Sorry you don’t like the trenches. Maybe you should move out of the trenches.
Some of us like the mud fights of 102/103/112 and practicing real patent law. I guess Alice is for the 4 star generals deciding to drop n*clear b@mbs and put aside all laws and decency.
This article should at least list the patent at issue. I have no idea what the “‘576’ patent is.
Of course, google search is just obvious software and not worthy of a patent.
Any claim to google search would be directed to abstract idea of searching for information, which goes back at least to the Library of Alexandria and perhaps to the Thessalonians….or Andorians and is therefore abstract.
I think this article is indicative of what many patent practitioners do, which is to immediately jump to detail without any overview or background info. People never take a step back and provide introductory info. I shouldn’t have to use Google to determine the patent number.
Anyway, the apparatus claim uses means plus function elements. Those are problematic, as if they are implemented by a processor, they need an algorithm for each “means”. The CAFC could kill the apparatus claims simply because there’s no algorithm disclosed.
As for Alice, the CAFC could determine the “abstract idea” is “automatic lip synchronization”, and the claim is likely not patentable, since the computer simply implements the abstract idea. Since there are no boundaries for determining what is and isn’t an “abstract” idea, it’s a toss up as to what the CAFC will think the abstract idea is (and the validity of the claims pretty much relies on the abstract idea, since the computer itself is not improved for these claims).
35USC100(b) The term process means process, art or method, and includes a new use of a KNOWN process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter, or material.
The term process means process, art or method, and includes a new use of a KNOWN process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter, or material.
You’re just moving the deck chairs around.
Nobody believes that any “new” use of a known process, machine etc is eligible per se simply because the process, machine etc in question was “known.” Eligibility will always depend on the details of this claimed “new” use. How could it be otherwise without turning the eligibility question into a farce for patent attorneys trying to protect the ineligible?
For example, a claim to a pair of binoculars that is structurally distinguished from binoculars in the prior art is eligible for patenting. But once the binoculars are “known” I can’t patent the process of “using [said binoculars] to observe [insert bird species I discovered here and disclosed for the first time in my patent application]”. That claim is ineligible.
Similarly, the process “A method of storing [insert useful non obvious information about a correlation] comprising writing said information on the side of [said binoculars]” is also ineligible.
“So what does 35USC100(b) mean?!” I hear you whimper. The answer is that 35 USC100(b) means that the mere fact that a manufacture was old doesn’t mean that a new use for the manufacture is per se ineligible. That’s one reaonable interpretation.
None of this is meant to defend the 1952 Patent Act, by the way. It’s a horribly written set of statutes, written by incompetent, incredibly short-sighted people who couldn’t legislate themselves out of a paper bag if their lives depended on it. That’s why it’s funny to listen to people like you insisting that we accept the statute “on its face” when the drafters — incompetent as they were — were nowhere near as kooky as the typical patent expanisionist.
You seem to be rather confused with the difference between patent eligibility and patentability.
Nope. I understand it perfectly. You seem to have forgotten that I was the person who taught you how eligibility and patentability relate to each other. You had even forgotten that your beloved “printed matter doctrine” is just eligibility re-written into 103.
I don’t think everybody else has forgottten that, however. Too bad for you.
You cannot teach that which you do not know, Malcolm.
You should realize that the exceptions to the judicial doctrine of printed matter is NOT solely a 103 doctrine.
But hey, let’s have a dialogue on this topic – an intellectua11y honest one in which we can discuss the state of controlling law, and why the judicial doctrine originally created for written matte was updated because of the realization that there were different Sets of written matter.
Shall I (again) provide my very easy to understand Set Theory explanation for you? You know the one, the one I asked you previously to engage in a conversation with.
You ran away at that time too.
discuss the state of controlling law, and why the judicial doctrine originally created for written matte was updated because of the realization that there were different Sets of written matter.
I’m case no one ever told you, a discussion involves two people – and I have already put the simple Set Theory explanation of printed matter on the table.
And I don’t mean to run away like you usually do.
And then there are the 5 flow charts…..
Les: I’m not sure why you say there is no algorithm disclosed.
But our brilliant judges on the Federal Circuit have indicated that plain English terms for information processing can suffice as an eligible “algorithm” for patent purposes. Of course, by doing so they further lowered the bar on the lowest form of innovation. Was that intentional? Of course it was. After all, flow charts are already sooper dooper hard to draft. That’s like 5th grade stuff. Patents need to be available to kindergartners, too, or else the economy will implode.
what about that ultra rich 1% group – are they the same “kindergartners” that you seek to use as an insult here?
There’s certainly a great deal of overlap.
That would be “new” logic and “new” information.
There’s no “dichotomy” here. At least, its not my “dichotomy”.
Dennis I also think the link to the main brief at the end of the article is incorrect? Both seem to go to the amicus.
Thanks Vera. I’ll work on that when I get back to the office.
The is case is about what Morse really stands for.
Everything in the claim is old but the information processing steps, and these are so broadly stated to be nothing more than an idea. Supreme Court would identify this as an example of a claim that is functional at the point of novelty, a problem first identified in O’Reilly v. Morse. But is this a 101 problem – or a problem of a different kind entirely?
I have argued here strenuously that Morse really is about section 112 – written description and enablement. However Morse is constantly being cited under 101 by the Supreme Court. Thus this case will test whether a claim that is functional at the point of novelty is a claim that has a problem under 101 or whether the claim has a problem under 112.
But my personal preferences are that the issue be addressed under 112, because the nonstatutory parts, information processing, is actually a applied to produce a new physical result – lip-synching of a three-dimensional character which I presume is a physical thing.
Ned: my personal preferences are that the issue be addressed under 112, because the nonstatutory parts, information processing, is actually a applied to produce a new physical result – lip-synching of a three-dimensional character which I presume is a physical thing.
Leaving aside the question as to whether there may be certain claims that are “better addressed” under 112, I don’t think the assertion of a “new physical result” dictates that “better” analysis.
1. A method for improved gravel delivery comprising (1) querying a computer configured to determine the location of the highest grade of available gravel from a look-up list; and (2) obtaining gravel from said location.
That’s an ineligible claim (whether you use a “configured” computer or a piece of paper to “store” the look-up list). I don’t think it’s “better analyzed under 112”. And it does produce a “new physical result” (i.e., you get higher grade gravel).
Well, MM, I like to be consistent.
The Morse doctrine about the functional claim is somewhat lost in the law since Halliburton was “overruled.” But the concept is fundamental and needs to be there in some form or fashion.
We wonder, do we not, whether Mayo would have turned out differently if the claims called for the updated dosage limits actually be applied in a next dose?
Ned: We wonder, do we not, whether Mayo would have turned out differently if the claims called for the updated dosage limits actually be applied in a next dose?
I think you’re forgetting about how awful the claims were in that case.
Remember: doctors were already raising and lowering doses of drugs in response to a patient’s measured ability to metabolize the drugs in question. They’d been doing that for a long time (in other contexts, people have been doing that for eons). The “innovation” in Prometheus was the correlation — i.e., the specific numbers that were recited. Protecting those numbers in the context of pre-existing technology (i.e., adminstering an old drug) is the real problem.
It’s worth remembering also that, at its core, Prometheus v. Mayo was an information processing case. The better question (with an eye towards this lip synching biz) might be whether Prometheus v Mao would have turned out differently had Prometheus’ claims recited the use of a computer to make the “determination.” I’m pretty sure the answer is no. What about a computer and a robot that “automatically” dispenses the proper amount of drug? Pretty sure the answer there is also “no”, as it should be.
If the use of the new dosage levels by doctors is the post-solution activity, and they have been doing this for a long time using their professional judgment, then this is not the kind of post-solution activity the Court is looking for.
Using a machine to automatically adjust dosage might — and communicating the test results automatically to the machine might be a required step. I think these kind of dosage adjusting machines are now the next big thing.
Would you agree that if claimed in the context of a machine or mechanical process that improvement of dosages described by the correlations would have passed 101?
In all seriousness Ned, why would he?
I am not entirely sure that MM and I are on the same page. That is why I am asking.
Is this “sense” of yours a euphemism for simply not liking what Congress did with 112 – as I have explained to you with the words of Congress, the Congrssional record, and with the writings of Frederico (yes, Fredrico, not Rich on this point)?
It’s not an old doctrine that is somewha lost in the change by Congress, I would posit that your understanding of the actual law did not make it past 1952 on this point.
anon, you and I both know that 112(f) was and is optional, and is limited to specific language that must be employed to signal that intention.
Other than that, functional language in claims can be definite or indefinite depending on whether the element being claimed is old or new. If old, the structure, materials, etc., are known. If new, they are not known, and such a claim covers not only what is disclosed, but the independent inventions of other that do the same thing or achieve the same result. This is the pith and essence of Morse, and that case, no matter how loudly you bark or bray, has not been overruled or abrogated.
You and I both know that the use of language sounding in functional terms is NOT limited to the optional form of claiming provided by 112(f) – and that such was reflected by Frederico.
Stop dissembling on this point please.
Do you really wonder why the wax-addicted Justices did not place their fingers in 112?
anon, since you never address what I actually say, your insistence on Congress is entirely beside the point.
All that you are doing here is a variation of the False Umbrage game.
I brought up the valid points – you are running away from them.
Sorry my friend – I merely have shown you the words of Congress as shown by the record and by Frederico. Your argument – in truth – is not with me, but with them.
Anon, I sometimes wonder about your reading comprehension skills. I have never said and do not say here that functional language in claims is not permitted outside of 112(f). I have argued instead that functionally expressed elements are entirely within the law if they are directed to “old”elements. It seems that you keep on ignoring what I am saying as if I did not say it. My remarks are carefully qualified when I speak of the prohibition of functional language in claims to claiming the novel subject matter.
Functional language is also useful to help describe positively recited structural elements, but the novelty cannot be in the functional expression.
Also, for your information, it is Federico not Frederico.
My apologies for the misspelled name – my autocorrect must have that name as it comes out.
Regardless, all that you are attempting to do here – without ANY support in the words of Congress, the congressional record, or Federico’s analysis is to rewrite history and reinsert your canard of Point of Novelty in a section of law (35 USC 112) that – for whatever reason – chose NOT to use that concept. This is CLEAR from Federico’s commentary, and no matter how much it grates you, you are just NOT at liberty to spin the law into something that it is not.
You want a different law? Talk to your congressman.
Anon, there is nothing in 112(f) that even remotely suggests that congress overruled or abrogated Morse and its progeny.
It is as I and Federico stated.
It is not as Rich misstated — although his cite to Westinghouse is an accurate statement of the law to be where a functional term was involved in a combination claim. Halliburton clearly overruled Westinghouse, but 112(f) did nothing to restore Westinghouse in full as it was a very limited remedy — and optional — remedy.
The bottom line, if a claim not using 112(f) is functional at the point of novelty, it is invalid. Now, the only question remains is this: under what statute and why? Morse->Halliburton cited 112 both (a) and (b). The recent Supreme Court cases regarding abstractness seem to suggest the problem is rather 101.
You know my view on this, right?
You do have to live with the actual history we have before us, not your “it should be thus” version.
The abrogation was not of Morse in the 101 sense. It most definitely was of Halliburton in the 112 sense.
Bottom line Ned is that your attempted use of PON is a canard, simply not supported in view of the Act of 1952 and you have provided ZERO support for your view – support properly dated after the changes the Act put in place explicitly in regard to 35 USC 112 (the words of Congress, the appropriate branch to whom the constitution allocated authority to write patent law).
So has it been written, so shall it be done.
anon, you might be right that the SC has now moved the doctrine of Morse firmly into 101. I think that is wrong, for the reasons stated. I think the claims in this case pass 101, but fail 112.
Your view of 35 USC 112, as written by Congress and discussed by Federico, remains incorrect.
Why do I think that this is not the last time that I will be pointing this out to you?
Other than that, functional language in claims can be definite or indefinite depending on whether the element being claimed is old or new. If old, the structure, materials, etc., are known.
I’m loathe to have any disagreement with someone who actually understands Halliburton (as you’re apparently in rare company among practicioners) – old or new is not the drawing point. Its true that novelty described by function is pretty much inherently improper, but just because known things do the function doesn’t limit the claim to those known things (that is, in fact, the holding that prompted 112fs creation), and consequently it’s often overbroad.
You do understand that Halliburton was abrogated, right?
112 – through the words of Congress in the Act of 1952 – really did happen and really did change the law.
You keep on making pronouncements geared to something other than the law, pretending what you say accords with the law.
What you say just does not accord.
Nah, it wasn’t, and that’s just one of the many reasons I can say Scoreboard!
That you want to remain ig norant of the law is no excuse.
Yes, you can continue to say “scoreboard” and that mere saying continues to have its same effect: making you look like a clue1ess mind1ess repeater of a belieb system dis-associated from actual law.
Let us know when you want to actually consider the words of Congress, the Congressional record, and the writings of Federico, all of which back up what I say.
How about that new way of writing patent…?
Yep. It invents with undisclosed rules.
Supreme Court would identify this as an example of a claim that is functional at the point of novelty, a problem first identified in O’Reilly v. Morse.
Yep, this is something the federal circuit will get wrong and the Supreme Court can fix.
I have argued here strenuously that Morse really is about section 112 – written description and enablement.
Enablement is a poor substitute, because when the invention is “all applications of an idea” how do you disprove that the art can’t achieve it? If you come up with an example, the response is that the art would have come up with it too.
WD is a much better fit. The Supreme Court has never officially adopted WD. But in this case I’ll give you another one – this case is also like GE v Wabash, and under the Nautilus standard the claims are not reasonably clear because they lack detail of the rule.
The author makes it sound like identifying the ineligible bstraction in the claims required some significant amount of work (“stripping away all the claim elements!” — oh my it sounds like some sort of assault on the precious claim!).
News flash: in most of these hotly contested junk software claims, it’s quite easy to identify the “innovation” and determine whether that additional limitation is an abstraction or not. It’s also essential — and this is true of nearly every subject matter eligibility analysis — that a comparison between the claim and prior art be done. Can the author possibly be confused about this fundamental fact in 2015? Gosh, I hope not.
1. A new computer, wherein said computer is configured to use rules to animate faces, wherein said computer is on a space ship.
is eligible. This is basic, fundamental stuff.
The term “conventional” has come up in these recent Supreme Court court cases because the unpatentable but otherwise eligible subject matter in those cases was, in fact, not only “known” but “widely known.” But elementary logic dictates that, in a claim comprising only an eligible element (e.g., a physically transformative step) and an ineligible abstraction (e.g., “thinking about something”) all that matters for eligibility purposes is that the eligible element was known in the art. It doesn’t matter if the eligible element was “well known” or very obscure. That’s because the key consideration in any eligibility analysis is: what is being taken out of the public domain or out of the hands of otherwise lawful actors by the claim? If the answer is “ineligible subject matter” then the claim is ineligible.
Commenters seeking to disparage the Supreme Court invariably gloss over these fundamental considerations because they wish these considerations didn’t exist. But they do. And they aren’t going anywhere. And yes it is bad news for the future of people who are deeply invested in controlling how the public is allowed to configure and modify their personal property when that property is a configurable information processing device designed for the purpose of being configured to process information.
Yes, that’s an “apparatus.” And yes it is bizarre that the limitations are method steps.
But that’s how ridiculously far we’ve stretched the system already to accomodate the author and his favorite kind of “innovation”: method steps are the “essence of electronic structure” or something like that. So said some judge about a quarter century ago. But it wasn’t “judicial activisim”! Nope. It’s never “judicial activism” when the patent bubble is inflated. Go figure.
No. Apparently incorrect text was pasted into the original post.
I think that’s exactly right – I’m glad the Federal Circuit is getting a chance to deal with this. This looks like a good vehicle for getting some elaboration on the Alice procedure.
Question for the sooper techno “experts” out there: how well do you suppose the simplest infringing embodiments of this claim compare to the best of the allegedly “inferior” prior art methods?
I’m guessing pretty darn poorly.
But the prior art did not, according to the patents, involve obtaining rules that define output morph weight sets as a function of the phonemes, or using those rules to generate the morph weight sets. Instead, an artist manually set the morph weights at certain important keyframes, and a computer program then interpolated the frames between the keyframes. ‘576 Patent 2:29-37.
And how did “the artist” determine what those important keyframes were? Using “rules”, of course. Rules based on logic, reason and experience.
That’s how people process information. That’s how people “obtain” rules and that’s what this patent prevented people from doing: teaching a computer to use the most relevant information to automate an information processing task that everybody knew was capable of being automated.
You say that you’ve written a program that actually works better than any human at this task? Then copyright your program and sell it and enjoy your profits. Your new “rules” and your new “logic” and your new “information” don’t belong in the patent system and they never did. It’s too bad (but not at all surprising — it was planned!) that you became addicted to your junk claims. I’m told that going cold turkey can be uncomfortable. But everybody has to grow up sometime, including the lovers of software patents and functional claiming at the point of novelty.
Malcolm’s “expertise” strikes (out) again.
Copyright protects the expressive aspect ONLY, and explicitly not the functional aspect.
Clearly the author is an expert at pulling self-pleasing conclusions out of his behind.
Perhaps the author can analyze the claims as he is supposed to according to the law and tell everyone: what was in the prior art at the time this application was filed?
Although the author seems completely unware of this fact, computer animation is old and it was old at the time this application was filed. Using an unstated set of “rules” to “determine” the manner in which something is going to be animated is certainly an abstraction.
Recognizing that “using rules” to perform data processing tasks is beyond the scope of patent protection will not “eviscerate patent law.” On the contrary, such recognition will save patent law by eliminating the lowest forms of innovation and the growing class of grifting attorneys who skim the system on behalf of those “innovators” and at the expense of everyone else.
[granting junk patents like this] will [shore] up our economic competitiveness and maintaining more than 2.5 million American jobs.
If anybody actually believes this, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
Prior art is not part of the 101 analysis.
I really wonder where this “prior art has no place in 101” thing comes from.
go arthur: I really wonder where this “prior art has no place in 101″ thing comes from.
It’s the zombie “argument” that sprung up in the run-up to Prometheus v. Mayo.
The roots lie in some completely worthless dicta in a case by Judge Rich and a mangling of the holding in Diehr.
The proponents of maximum patent expansionism will never give up on the “no claim dissection!” rhetoric because disallowing claim dissection turns eligibility into a “magic word” game that software patent lovers excel at (or think they do).
My point is that the courts conflate 101 and 102. You say that’s crazy and then paste a quote of what might be a court conflating 101 and 102. I’m not sure what your point is.
If you want to challenge a patent for want of novelty or because the claimed subject matter was obvious, then make a challenge under 102 or 103. That’s what they are there for.
No, the inclusion of the word method in a claim is not sufficient to pass 101. The claim must actually recite a method.
If it does, THAT is sufficient to pass 101.
I showed you a relatively old Supreme Court case doing just that. I could cite any number of such cases, if you’d like.
My point is that your understanding of 101 is at odds with the Supreme Court’s and has been for some time. Pretty simple.
There are MANY areas of law in which a particular set of facts can implicate multiple laws.
An single action can constitute multiple torts. A single state action can violate multiple amendments to the constitution.
Why is this legal principle so unsettling when applied to patent law?
You are misunderstanding the use of the word conflation.
It is definitely true that a single act can “break” multiple laws – but that is not the sense being used here for conflation.
Instead, the sense is that those multiple laws are being jumbled together to create something that is in fact not a law in order to reach a desired end.
It is this “co-mingling” that those who respect the rule of law (and are knowledgeable of history – e.g. the origin of 103), that find all of this modern day Court shenanagins offensive.
Put simply (again), Congress acted in 1952 to strip the courts of the tool of common law evolution to define the term “invention” (which by the way included dozens of variants including Gist of the Invention). Congress expressly acted so because the Courts had made a mess of things and had turned largely anti-patent (look up the phrase “the only valid patent is one that has not yet appeared before us”).
All of this is documented history (as Prof Hricik only too willingly had a guess-the-quote thread that leads you to the correct understanding).
So, as I correct you yet again, the unsettling thing here is the internet style shoutdown of patent law principles being trounced in order to advocate a different law than the one the branch of government duly authorized put into place.
It is not unsettling that many statutes are applicable to a claim.
What is unsettling is when a court says they are acting in accord with statue A, (because they have been asked to evaluate an application of statute A) and then base their reasoning on something other than statute A, forever taking statue A through the looking glass into a realm of trippy gibberish.
I’ll agree with you that they should just declare 101 unconstitutional and forbid the making of patents until Congress fixes it.
I did not say any of that.
Why, in your opinion, is 101 unconstitutional?
Congress does not have “the power to grant patents.” Congress has the power to grant patents to promote the progress of the useful arts. Congress’ power is not absolute, it has limits. One of those limits is novelty. If Congress were to enact a statutory scheme that allowed for non-novel things to be patented, that scheme would be unconstitutional. That ought to be pretty obvious, as a retroactive patent would effectuate a deprivation of property without due process.
In short, there are a handful of things Congress can’t do with its power, and the court had a line of reasoning back in Morse which stated that one cannot discover or describe a principle or result (there it was using electricity to convey information) and then claim all applications of that principle/result because that would chill innovation – the first person to make something would have the entire field, he would have no incentive to further patent (as it doesn’t increase the scope of his patent grant) and nobody else would have an incentive to disclose because they couldn’t practice their disclosure anyway.
Today, people are routinely Morses – they describe their machine, say that from the workings of their machine one can glean a result or principle, and then claim all applications of that result or principle.
When Congress codified the patent laws and put only a statutory class as a means of gatekeeping, they ignored the Court’s prior ruling that Congress lacked the power to grant patents on “any application of an idea” even if it fell within the statutory classes. To solve the issue the Court simply said that it was clear the intent of Congress was to codify their prior rulings, and therefore there was a judicial exception to the statutory classes.
I agree with you that they should have just evaluated the statute itself. Then it would be a simple matter of pointing to their prior ruling, stating that Congress overreached, and declaring 101 unconstitutional. That would have required Congress to put the words in themselves, and then people wouldn’t get confused that the law has always been this way and the court isn’t inventing tests out of thin air.
People confuse a commercially valuable patent with the patent that Congress can constitutionally grant. You are not and have never been entitled to a commercially valuable patent. You’re entitled to a patent on what you have invented. The fact that once a principle or idea is out there it makes it easy for other people to invent different things that achieve similar results is a) irrelevant from a legal standpoint and b) the public good of vesting a patent power in congress to begin with.
This guy (supposedly) had a set of rules. He can claim his set of rules. He can’t claim any rules that achieve a result. The fact that some people read the words of the statute (as if those words exist in some non-federal constitution vacuum) and think he can just shows that the statute should have been thrown out. So I agree with you, the court shouldn’t say they’re acting in accord with 101, they should simply say 101 as written is unconstitutional and force congress to fix it, which they would do pretty quickly, as it would prevent all other patents from issuing while it was down.
Les – what you want to be reading is Section II of Graham.
If you think that one of the constitutional limits is “novelty,” then you really need to read Golan v. Holder.
Golan isn’t a patent case. Graham is. I think I’ll take the patent case requiring novelty as a constitutional matter over a copyright case.
It is the exact same constitutional clause.
Hey, you are the one trying to bump this into a constitutional issue – you are just going to make an actual case, though. And your case WILL have to deal with Golan.
Your first legal mistake is not recogizing this.
That’s kind of lost sometimes when people forget that Diehr cabined both Benson and Flook – See Bilski.
That has different considerations in the creative versus scientific contexts. Why don’t you go arguing for 150 year patents too and see how far that gets you.
I never said that there were NOT different considerations, nor did I say that the law as written by Congress has to be the same – CLEARLY.
But that does not help you in your attempt here to paint something as constitutional versus statutory.
You really don’t seem to get how law works.
And whether or not people (Congress) would want 150 year term for patents is NOT dispositive as to whether people (Congress) could have 150 year terms.
I’m well aware that the Supreme Court conflates 101 and 102 and 103. When they do so, they are wrong.
Go Authur, nice quote from Flook. The Supreme Court continues to look for an “inventive” application to distinguish insignificant post-solution activity.
The Federal Circuit has been focused on a physical use of the ineligible or abstract subject matter.
The MOT similarly focuses on a “transformative” use.
This is tough – but my personal preference remains that the issue be addressed as to whether the ineligible is applied to produce a new or improved physical result.
That said, if the point of novelty is functional, non specific, merely states a result to be achieved and the like, then the claim should not be patentable under Morse->Perkins Glue->Wabash Appliance->United Carbon->Halliburton and the oft-citied Rubber-Tip Pencil Co. v. Howard, 87 U.S. 498, 22 L. Ed. 410 (1874).
The Supreme Court has been all over the map as to the statutory basis for Morse, and that is a problem.
Les: Prior art is not part of the 101 analysis.
The relationship of the claimed subject matter to the prior art certainly is part of the 101 analysis. There’s no way around that and there never was.
It’s incredibly bad form to repeat Judge Rich’s error over and over and again. The world has moved on, thankfully. You need to move on as well.
Very well reasoned arguments Tim.
Well, better claims than the horrific claims at issue in Alice would certainly have helped matters.
But the lovers of software patents seemed to like Alice’s claims well enough. They certainly went to the mat defending them here and elsewhere over and over again.
Same with the ABL Labs junk claims. Same with Ultramercial’s junk claims. Same with those ridiculous bingo management on a computer junk claims.
And the same with these junk claims.
There’s a decent explanaiton for this consistency, by the way. I’ll leave it to the reasonable reader to do the deep thinking required to figure it out.
Yeah MM that is the way it works. You know for good criminal law it is imperative that the criminal commit good crimes.
Let’s face it. The SCOTUS hasn’t a clue and needs to be overruled with new legislation.
I for one have not been thrilled with the claims in any of the cases you mentioned. But the issue you raise now is not a 101 issue. Maybe its a 112 issue.
101 is about categories. The claims in the subject cases were clearly withing the statutory categories.
My objection is to the courts muddying and confounding the 101 analysis in general because of some perceived expediency or because of a desire to invalidate even thought the wrong question was brought before them.
Are mental processes eligible because “processes”?
Are new functionalities eligible for protection with a patent (“functionalities” aren’t within the statutory category of patentable subject matter)?
If I call something a “manufacture”, it is automatically eligible for patenting even if the only difference between the old manufacture and the new manufacture is a useful, non-obvious math equation written on the side of the manufacture?
Thanks in advance for your thoughtful answers. I think some of these questions just might have already been addressed by the Supreme Court and other courts over the years but you’re the expert.
Are the words “specific, practical, and useful” simply a thin veneer of the words used in State Street that causes so much angst for so many people?
I’m not saying they are, and I’m certainly not saying that my views depend on that particular case, but perhaps Mr. Molino can comment on the symmetry, confirming or distinguishing the same.
1.	The phrase “specific, practical, and useful” wasn’t intended to invoke State Street or to argue for resurrection of the Federal Circuit’s “useful, concrete and tangible result” test.
2.	Rather, these (and similar) terms were intended to distinguish the claims at issue from an “abstract idea” under the Supreme Court’s recent case law. The Court’s decisions have emphasized that an abstract idea isn’t patentable, but the practical application of such an idea may be. (As stated in Alice, “Applications of such [abstract] concepts to a new and useful end . . . remain eligible for patent protection.” (internal quotations and alterations omitted)).
3.	So, our use of “specific, practical, and useful” was intended as a reference to Alice and other recent 101 decisions, not State Street.
4.	Also, it is important to recognize that, in rejecting the “useful, concrete, and tangible result” test, the Supreme Court did not suggest that whether an invention is useful and specific is somehow irrelevant to eligibility.
5.	Rather, the Court said that a “useful, concrete, and tangible result” –- standing alone — was an inadequate basis for determining eligibility. Under Alice an invention must still be useful and concrete, but these are necessary, rather than sufficient, to establishing eligibility.
I am left to wonder though, if the triumvirate of “useful, concrete, and tangible” – as those words are truly understood in their full context – are to be considered “necessary, rather than sufficient,” how then could the triumvirate of “specific, practical, and useful” fair any better?
Surely, something that is concrete cannot be confused with an idea, let alone an abstract one.
Looking at the two sets of words, “useful” is in both, and can likely be dismissed from the immediate discussion. “Practical,” is not a strong word, as it tends to merely reflect “useful.” “Specific,” likewise is not a strong word for the purposes here, as even abstract thoughts can be specific. Rather, the word if it brings forth any meaning at all seems to be a call to the (Supreme Court demoted) MoT clue (to be emphasized – NOT a test). For in the Machine prong there is the reflection of “specific machine.” – as a quick aside, I’m not sure that anyone has ever explains how ANY computer is not a specific machine, specific in the sense that a computer is a different machine than a whole host of non-computing machines; but that’s a more nuanced argument for another day.
On the other hand, as already mentioned “concrete” is a much better word for your purpose. Which leaves the final word “tangible,” which also is much better or the purpose of distinguishing thought (let alone abstract thought).
With these thoughts [pun intended] in mind, I am not seeing the strength that I could easily see in your choices, even if those choices carry some rather unfortunate baggage.

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