In re Comiskey

Appellant Stephen W. Comiskey (“Comiskey”) appeals the decision of the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (“Board”) affirming the examiner’s rejection of claims 1-59 of his patent application as obvious in view of the prior art and therefore unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 103. We do not reach the Board’s obviousness rejection of the independent claims under § 103 because we conclude that Comiskey’s independent claims 1 and 32 and most of their dependent claims are unpatentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. We conclude that independent claims 17 and 46 (and their dependent claims) and dependent claims 15, 30, 44, and 58 recite statutory subject matter but remand to the PTO to determine whether the addition of a general purpose computer or modern communication devices to Comiskey’s otherwise unpatentable mental process would have been obvious. We therefore affirm-in-part, vacate-in-part, and remand.

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