Chapter §3.03 Machines Within §101

• Jurisdiction: United States

§3.03 Machines Within §101

[A] Definition of a Machine

A machine (or apparatus) is a human-made device that has moving parts. The only area of significant controversy involving the machine category of potentially patentable subject matter is whether programmed computers (i.e., computers operating under the control of computer software programs) qualify as machines within the meaning of §101. Case law generally answers this question in the affirmative.

[B] Computer-Implemented Machines

The en banc Federal Circuit considered whether a computer-implemented device qualifies as a machine under 35 U.S.C. §101 in In re Alappat.⁶⁸⁰ Alappat's patent application was directed to a "rasterizer," a device for creating a smooth waveform display in a digital oscilloscope (i.e., analogous to creating a clearer picture on a television screen). The only independent claim at issue in the application recited the following:

A rasterizer for converting vector list data representing sample magnitudes of an input waveform into anti-aliased pixel illumination intensity data to be displayed on a display means comprising:

(a) means for determining the vertical distance between the endpoints of each of the vectors in the data list;

(b) means for determining the elevation of a row of pixels that is spanned by the vector;

(c) means for normalizing the vertical distance and elevation; and

(d) means for outputting illumination intensity data as a predetermined function of the normalized vertical distance and elevation. ⁶⁸¹

In an unconventional procedure, an "expanded" panel of the USPTO Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences rejected this claim as failing to recite potentially patentable subject matter under §101. The Board refused to construe the recited "means" limitations in accordance with 35 U.S.C. §112, ¶6, which would have limited the claim's reach to the "corresponding structure" that the application disclosed as performing each function, and any "equivalents thereof."⁶⁸² Rather, the Board interpreted each means limitation as encompassing any and every means for performing the recited function. The Board concluded that the rasterizer claim, thus interpreted, was in reality a claim to a process, and each means clause merely a disguised step in that process. In the Board's view, the resulting process was nothing more than an unpatentable "mathematical algorithm" for computing pixel information, and thus not patentable because unapplied mathematical algorithms are outside...