In re Comiskey

Acting en banc, the court today vacated the September 20, 2007, judgment in this case, and the panel’s original opinion, which is reported at 499 F.3d 1365 (Fed. Cir. 2007), was withdrawn. The en banc court reassigned the opinion to the panel for revision. The panel’s original opinion is revised as follows:
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. 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. With respect to independent claims 17 and 46 (and dependent claims 18-29, 31, 47-57, and 59) and dependent claims 15, 30, 44, and 58, we remand to the PTO to consider the § 101 question in the first instance. We therefore affirm-in-part, vacate-in-part, and remand.

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