In In re Alappat, 33 F.3d 1526 (Fed. Cir. 1994) (en banc) the question was the
eligibility for patent of a rasterizer that mathematically transforms data to eliminate
aliasing in a digital oscilloscope. The court held that a computer-implemented system
that produces a “useful, concrete, and tangible result” is Section 101 subject matter. Id.
at 1544. This court now rules that “a ‘useful, concrete and tangible result’ analysis
should no longer be relied on.” Maj. op. at 20 n.19.
The Alappat court stressed the intent, embodied in the language of the statute,
that the patent system be broadly available to new and useful inventions:
The use of the expansive term “any” in §101 represents Congress’s intent
not to place any restrictions on the subject matter for which a patent may
be obtained beyond those specifically recited in §101 and other parts of
Title 35.
33 F.3d at 1542. This court looked to the Supreme Court’s guidance in its Section 101
decisions, and explained:
A close analysis of Diehr, Flook, and Benson reveals that the Supreme
Court never intended to create an overly broad, fourth category of
[mathematical] subject matter excluded from §101. Rather, at the core of
the Court’s analysis in each of these cases lies an attempt by the Court to
explain a rather straightforward concept, namely, that certain types of
mathematical subject matter, standing alone, represent nothing more than
abstract ideas until reduced to some type of practical application, and thus
that subject matter is not, in and of itself, entitled to patent protection.
Id. at 1543 (emphasis in original). The court cited the Supreme Court’s distinction
between abstract ideas and their practical application, and stated of the claimed
rasterizer: “This is not a disembodied mathematical concept which may be
characterized as an ‘abstract idea,’ but rather a specific machine to produce a useful,
concrete, and tangible result.” Id. at 1544.
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