We hold that the Applicants' process as claimed does not transform any article to
a different state or thing. Purported transformations or manipulations simply of public or
private legal obligations or relationships, business risks, or other such abstractions
cannot meet the test because they are not physical objects or substances, and they are
not representative of physical objects or substances. Applicants' process at most
incorporates only such ineligible transformations. See Appellants' Br. at 11 ("[The
claimed process] transforms the relationships between the commodity provider, the
consumers and market participants . . . ."). As discussed earlier, the process as
claimed encompasses the exchange of only options, which are simply legal rights to
purchase some commodity at a given price in a given time period. See J.A. at 86-87.
The claim only refers to "transactions" involving the exchange of these legal rights at a
"fixed rate corresponding to a risk position." See ′892 application cl.1. Thus, claim 1
does not involve the transformation of any physical object or substance, or an electronic
signal representative of any physical object or substance. Given its admitted failure to
meet the machine implementation part of the test as well, the claim entirely fails the
machine-or-transformation test and is not drawn to patent-eligible subject matter.
Applicants' arguments are unavailing because they rely on incorrect or
insufficient considerations and do not address their claim's failure to meet the
requirements of the Supreme Court's machine-or-transformation test. First, they argue
that claim 1 produces "useful, concrete and tangible results." But as already discussed,
this is insufficient to establish patent-eligibility under § 101. Applicants also argue that
their claimed process does not comprise only "steps that are totally or substantially
practiced in the mind but clearly require physical activity which have [sic] a tangible
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