Court in Benson was explicit that: “We do not hold that no process patent could ever
qualify if it did not meet [the Court’s] prior precedents.” The Court recognized that
Cochrane’s statement was made in the context of a mechanical process and a past era,
and protested:
It is said we freeze process patents to old technologies, leaving no room
for the revelations of the new, onrushing technology. Such is not our
purpose.
Benson, 409 U.S. at 71. Instead, the Court made clear that it was not barring patents
on computer programs, and rejected the “argu[ment] that a process patent must either
be tied to a particular machine or apparatus or must operate to change articles or
materials to a ‘different state or thing’” in order to satisfy Section 101. Id. Although my
colleagues now describe these statements as “equivocal,” maj. op. at 14, there is
nothing equivocal about “We do not so hold.” Benson, 409 U.S. at 71. Nonetheless,
this court now so holds.
In Parker v. Flook the Court again rejected today’s restrictions
The eligibility of mathematical processes next reached the Court in Parker v.
Flook, 437 U.S. 584 (1978), where the Court held that the “process” category of Section
101 was not met by a claim to a mathematical formula for calculation of alarm limits for
use in connection with catalytic conversion of hydrocarbons and, as in Benson, the
claim was essentially for the mathematical formula. The Court later summarized its
Flook holding, stating in Diamond v.Diehr that:
The [Flook] application, however, did not purport to explain how these
other variables were to be determined, nor did it purport “to contain any
disclosure relating to the chemical processes at work, the monitoring of
the process variables, nor the means of setting off an alarm or adjusting
an alarm system. All that it provides is a formula for computing an
updated alarm limit.”
2007-1130
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