extra-solution activity”. Maj. op. at 24. 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 25-26. 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 (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. 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
2007-1130
34