Opinion ID: 209543
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 13

Heading: Uncertain guidance for the future

Text: Not only past expectations, but future hopes, are disrupted by uncertainty as to application of the new restrictions on patent eligibility. For example, the court states that even if a process is tied to a machine or transforms matter, the machine or transformation must impose meaningful limits and cannot constitute insignificant extra-solution activity. Maj. op. at 961-62. We are advised that transformation must be central to the purpose of the claimed process, id., although we are not told what kinds of transformations may qualify, id. at 962-63. These concepts raise new conflicts with precedent. This court and the Supreme Court have stated that there is no legally recognizable or protected `essential' element, `gist' or `heart' of the invention in a combination patent. Allen Eng'g Corp. v. Bartell Industries, Inc., 299 F.3d 1336, 1345 (Fed. Cir.2002) (quoting Aro Mfg. Co. v. Convertible Top Replacement Co., 365 U.S. 336, 345, 81 S.Ct. 599, 5 L.Ed.2d 592 (1961)). This rule applies with equal force to process patents, see W.L. Gore & Associates, Inc. v. Garlock, Inc., 721 F.2d 1540, 1548 (Fed.Cir.1983) (there is no gist of the invention rule for process patents), and is in accord with the rule that the invention must be considered as a whole, rather than dissected, in assessing its patent eligibility under Section 101, see Diehr, 450 U.S. at 188, 101 S.Ct. 1048. It is difficult to predict an adjudicator's view of the invention as a whole, now that patent examiners and judges are instructed to weigh the different process components for their centrality and the significance of their extra-solution activity in a Section 101 inquiry. As for whether machine implementation will impose meaningful limits in a particular case, the meaningfulness of computer usage in the great variety of technical and informational subject matter that is computer-facilitated is apparently now a flexible parameter of Section 101. Each patent examination center, each trial court, each panel of this court, will have a blank slate on which to uphold or invalidate claims based on whether there are sufficient meaningful limits, or whether a transformation is adequately central, or the significance of process steps. These qualifiers, appended to a novel test which itself is neither suggested nor supported by statutory text, legislative history, or judicial precedent, raise more questions than they answer. These new standards add delay, uncertainty, and cost, but do not add confidence in reliable standards for Section 101. Other aspects of the changes of law also contribute uncertainty. We aren't told when, or if, software instructions implemented on a general purpose computer are deemed tied to a particular machine, for if Alappat's guidance that software converts a general purpose computer into a special purpose machine remains applicable, there is no need for the present ruling. For the thousands of inventors who obtained patents under the court's now-discarded criteria, their property rights are now vulnerable. The court also avoids saying whether the State Street Bank and AT & T v. Excel inventions would pass the new test. The drafting of claims in machine or process form was not determinative in those cases, for we consider the scope of  101 to be the same regardless of the formÔÇömachine or processÔÇöin which a particular claim is drafted. AT & T v. Excel, 172 F.3d at 1357. From either the machine or the transformation viewpoint, the processing of data representing price, profit, percentage, cost, or loss in State Street Bank is not materially different from the processing of the Bilski data representing commodity purchase and sale prices, market transactions, and risk positions; yet Bilski is held to fail our new test, while State Street is left hanging. The uncertainty is illustrated in the contemporaneous decision of In re Comiskey, 499 F.3d 1365, 1378-79 (Fed.Cir.2007), where the court held that systems that depend for their operation on human intelligence alone to solve practical problems are not within the scope of Section 101; and In re Nuijten, 500 F.3d 1346, 1353-54 (Fed.Cir. 2007), where the court held that claims to a signal with an embedded digital watermark encoded according to a given encoding process were not directed to statutory subject matter under Section 101, although the claims included physical but transitory forms of signal transmission such as radio broadcasts, electrical signals through a wire, and light pluses through a fiber-optic cable. Although this uncertainty may invite some to try their luck in court, the wider effect will be a disincentive to innovation-based commerce. For inventors, investors, competitors, and the public, the most grievous consequence is the effect on inventions not made or not developed because of uncertainty as to patent protection. Only the successes need the patent right.