Let's start with a Practice Tip o’ the Day: When analyzing 101 under Bilski, be sure to look at dependent claims.
That said, we'll go and apply it twice today:
Those who have followed closely Bilski’s wake of subject matter destruction
may have heard of Every Penny Counts, Inc., (“EPC”) the Florida based entity
that has sued Visa, AmEx, Bank of America and others on U.S. Patent No. 6,112,191. The patent has been asserted against programs such as B of A’s “Keep the Change” that rounds debit card
purchases to the nearest dollar and pockets the difference in a savings
account. In that pending litigation, B of A successfully moved to
reopen discovery following the Bilski decision in order to serve 101-related
interrogatories (which the court recently ruled went outside the scope of
Bilski in denying B of A’s motion to compel responses).
Well, it looks like EPC has another arrow in its quiver – a newly issued, apparently unrelated patent that issued today:
Key terms are in bold.
U.S. Patent No. 7,502,758 Creation and distribution of excess funds, deposits, and payments
Assignee: Every Penny Counts, Inc. 1. A method of accumulating credits from financial movements to and from an account held by a financial transactor and managed by an account manager, comprising: initiating roundup by accessing entries in the account with an information processor authorizing, by the transactor, rounding up of entries in the account; rounding up the entries in the account to obtain a total roundup amount; withdrawing the roundup amount from the account and debiting the account with the roundup amount; wherein the step of initiating roundup is performed by said information processor accessing the account in the account manager, and the steps of initiating, rounding up, and withdrawal are done outside the control of the account manager. |
Commentary: The examiner did not try to identify a particular machine. But I did. Unsuccessfully. If someone sees one, please let me know. The obvious candidate is the oh-so-particular “information processor”. But according to dependent claim 7 (today's trick), this may not be a machine at all:
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7. A method as in claim 1, wherein the steps of accessing and rounding are performed by said information processor and said information processor is a service organization.
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The application claims priority to a PCT filed in 2001 from some September 2000 provisional applications. It’s a pre-Bilski allowance, but barely – October 2008. Still, it’s tough for me to believe this one got through GAU 3696. The 3600 TC was on heightened scrutiny for several months before Bilski, and 101 rejections (in my experience, anyway) were almost routine. And there was a post-allowance, post-Bilski 312 amendment that gave the examiner another bite at the apple with the Machine-or-Transformation test fresh on his mind. But he didn't bite. Perhaps there is something in that the allowance here was the result of a pre-appeal conference after this claim had been finally rejected.
Maybe we’ll see this one fought on 101 in litigation down the road...
Here’s another one where the dependent claims shed some light on the alleged machine:
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U.S. Patent No. 7,501,961 Determining a toll amount Assignee: Rent
A Toll, Ltd. determining a capture rate of transports at a toll location; determining the toll amount based on a multiplier value; determining via a toll processing unit, said multiplier value based on the capture rate of the toll location; and wherein the determining the multiplier occurs after the determining the capture rate. |
Commentary:
| 6. The method of claim 1, wherein the capture rate is determined by at least
one of: a toll authority; a third party entity; a toll rental entity; an
electronic device; and a human being. 7. The method of claim 1, wherein the capture rate is determined by at least one of: a manual process; an automatic process; a semi-automatic process; a static process; and a dynamic process. |
Egad! But, believe or not, I think the
TPU here saves the day. The spec and
figures make it clear that this TPU is a machine that performs several specific
functions and is more than just a general purpose computer when viewed in the
context of the system here. Recall that it only takes one element that is tied to the machine to satisfy BIlski. Good thing, too, since without that TPU, this claim is roadkill.
And here is today's Patent of The Day
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U.S. Patent No. 7,502,827 System and method for communication between motorists in automobiles using license plate information 1. A system for communicating with a motorist, comprising: a repository of electronic addresses in which a vehicle is assigned an electronic address according to its license plate registration number, wherein the electronic address includes the license plate registration number; and a messaging service that enables a motorist associated with the vehicle to send and/or receive messages using the electronic address from said repository of electronic addresses via a wireless communication system. |
Commentary:
“For instance, I might want to order pizza from a pizza truck in front of me, or advertise my profession, or perpetually receive bids on my car, or buy a car from the salesman in front of me because he looks honest, all the way to having police officers rather to issue tickets/warnings through this system rather than step out into a dangerous highway or situation in general, etc.”
Wow, it actually makes me want to get stuck in traffic behind a bunch of delivery vans. Or to fulfill my childhood dream of stopping the Entenmann's truck. Plus, if you get caught up with road rage when the jerk in the SUV cuts you off, you can safely text him the finger, I guess. Limitless possibilities.
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