sign data taken directly from a patient qualify, or can population data derived in part
from statistics and extrapolation be used?) What link to a machine is sufficient to invoke
the “or machine” prong? Are the “specific” machines of Benson required, or can a
general purpose computer qualify? What constitutes “extra-solution activity?” If a
process may meet eligibility muster as a “machine,” why does the Act “require” a
machine link for a “process” to show eligibility? Does the rule against redundancy itself
suggest an inadequacy in this complex spider web of tests supposedly “required” by the
language of section 101?
One final point, reading section 101 as it is written will not permit a flurry of
frivolous and useless inventions. Even beyond the exclusion for abstractness, the final
clause of section 101—“subject to the conditions and requirements of this title”—
ensures that a claimed invention must still satisfy the “conditions and requirements” set
forth in the remainder title 35. Id. These statutory conditions and requirements better
serve the function of screening out unpatentable inventions than some vague
“transformation” or “proper machine link” test.
In simple terms, the statute does not mention “transformations” or any of the
other Industrial Age descriptions of subject matter categories that this court endows with
inordinate importance today. The Act has not empowered the courts to impose
limitations on patent eligible subject matter beyond the broad and ordinary meaning of
the terms process, machine, manufacture, and composition of matter. It has instead
preserved the promise of patent protection for still unknown fields of invention.
Innovation has moved beyond the brick and mortar world. Even this court’s test,
with its caveats and winding explanations seems to recognize this. Today’s software
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