Ex Parte Grady et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardOct 13, 201714296098 (P.T.A.B. Oct. 13, 2017) Copy Citation United States Patent and Trademark Office UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE United States Patent and Trademark Office Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS P.O.Box 1450 Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450 www.uspto.gov APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO. 14/296,098 06/04/2014 James Grady 62/1719US(l) 4354 22822 7590 10/17/2017 LEWIS RICE LLC ATTN: BOX IP DEPT. 600 Washington Ave. Suite 2500 ST LOUIS, MO 63101 EXAMINER NGUYEN, TRAN N ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 3686 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 10/17/2017 ELECTRONIC Please find below and/or attached an Office communication concerning this application or proceeding. The time period for reply, if any, is set in the attached communication. Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the following e-mail address(es): IPDEPT@LEWISRICE.COM KDAMMAN@LEWISRICE.COM PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte JAMES GRADY, DAVID CHRISTENSON, and ROBERT UECKER Appeal 2016-005127 Application 14/296,098 Technology Center 3600 Before NINA L. MEDLOCK, AMEE A. SHAH, and ALYSSA A. FINAMORE, Administrative Patent Judges. SHAH, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL1 The Appellants2 appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s final decision rejecting claims 1—12. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). The Appellants’ representative appeared for oral hearing in this appeal on September 19, 2017 (“Hearing”).3 We AFFIRM. 1 Throughout this opinion, we refer to the Appellants’ Appeal Brief (“Appeal Br.,” filed Aug. 24, 2015), Reply Brief (“Reply Br.,” filed Apr. 12, 2016), and Specification (“Spec.,” filed June 4, 2014), and to the Examiner’s Answer (“Ans.,” mailed Feb. 12, 2016) and Final Office Action (“Final Act.,” mailed Sept. 23, 2014). 2 According to the Appellants, the real party in interest is “LDM Group, LLC which was recently acquired by a New Jersey limited liability company, PDR, LLC.” Appeal Br. 1. 3 Throughout this opinion, we refer to the transcript of the Hearing (“Tr.”). Appeal 2016-005127 Application 14/296,098 STATEMENT OF THE CASE The Appellants’ invention relates generally to “providing content to patients who have been prescribed medications,” and more specifically to providing “content at the point of prescribing of the medication” and “ongoing dialogue between a patient and a medication provider.” Spec. 12. Claim 1 (Appeal Br. 20 (Claims App.)) is the only independent claim on appeal, is representative of the subject matter on appeal, and is reproduced below: 1. A method for generating information at a physician's office for a patient related to a prescribed medication, the method comprising: providing: a physician’s server attached to the Internet and running content requesting software; an auxiliary computer attached to the Internet and running selection software; and a bridge server; entering prescription information into said content requesting software, as part of a medication being prescribed to a patient; said content requesting software forming a first data structure including at least a portion of said prescription information; said content requesting software transmitting said first data structure to said auxiliary computer; said selection software using at least a portion of said first data structure to select content for said patient; said bridge server requesting a communication from said auxiliary computer; 2 Appeal 2016-005127 Application 14/296,098 only upon receipt of such a request from said bridge server, said auxiliary computer sending a second data structure indicative of said content to said bridge server. THE REJECTION Claims 1—12 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as directed to non- statutory subject matter. Final Act. 2. ANALYSIS The Appellants argue claims 1—12 as a group. See Appeal Br. 7, 8 (providing no separate arguments for dependent claims 2—12). We select independent claim 1 as representative of the group; claims 2—12 stand or fall with claim 1. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(l)(iv). Under 35 U.S.C. § 101, a patent may be obtained for “any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof.” The Supreme Court has “long held that this provision contains an important implicit exception: Laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas are not patentable.” Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Inti, 134 S. Ct. 2347, 2354 (2014) (quoting Assn for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., 133 S. Ct. 2107, 2116 (2013)). The Court has, thus, made clear that “[pjhenomena of nature, though just discovered, mental processes, and abstract intellectual concepts are not patentable, as they are the basic tools of scientific and technological work.” Gottschalkv. Benson, 409 U.S. 63, 67 (1972) (emphasis added). Following the Supreme Court, the Federal Circuit has similarly held that mental processes are not patent-eligible subject matter. Therefore, the Court has held that methods which can be performed entirely in the human 3 Appeal 2016-005127 Application 14/296,098 mind are unpatentable not because “there is anything wrong with claiming mental method steps as part of a process containing non-mental steps,” but rather because “methods which can be performed entirely in the human mind are the types of methods that embody the ‘basic tools of scientific and technological work’ that are free to all men and reserved exclusively to none.” CyberSource Corp. v. Retail Decisions, Inc., 654 F.3d 1366, 1373 (Fed. Cir. 2011) (citation omitted). The Supreme Court in Alice reiterated the two-step framework, set forth previously in Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., 132 S. Ct. 1289, 1300 (2012), “for distinguishing patents that claim laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas from those that claim patent-eligible applications of those concepts.” Alice, 134 S. Ct. at 2355. The first step in that analysis is to “determine whether the claims at issue are directed to one of those patent-ineligible concepts.” Id. (citing Mayo, 132 S. Ct. at 1296—97) (emphasis added). If so, the second step is to consider the elements of the claims “individually and ‘as an ordered combination’” to determine whether the additional elements “‘transform the nature of the claim’ into a patent-eligible application.” Id. (quoting Mayo, 132 S. Ct. at 1297-98). In other words, the second step is to “search for an ‘inventive concept’—i.e., an element or combination of elements that is ‘sufficient to ensure that the patent in practice amounts to significantly more than a patent upon the [ineligible concept] itself.’” Id. (alteration in original) (quoting Mayo, 132 S. Ct. at 1294). The Court acknowledged in Mayo, that “all inventions at some level embody, use, reflect, rest upon, or apply laws of nature, natural phenomena, or abstract ideas.” Mayo, 132 S. Ct. at 1293. 4 Appeal 2016-005127 Application 14/296,098 We, therefore, look to whether the claims focus on a specific means or method that improves the relevant technology or are instead directed to a result or effect that itself is the abstract idea, and merely invoke generic processes and machinery. See Enfish, LLC v. Microsoft Corp., 822 F.3d 1327, 1336 (Fed. Cir. 2016). Initially, we find unpersuasive the Appellants’ argument that the Examiner’s rejection is in error because the Examiner has failed to provide sufficient reasons for the rejection. Appeal Br. 9; see also id. at 10-13, Reply Br. 2—A. In rejecting the pending claims under § 101, the Examiner analyzed the claims using the Mayo/Alice two-step framework. Specifically, the Examiner notified the Appellants that claims 1—12 are directed to a process of generating information related to prescribed medication (Ans. 3) and to “the abstract idea of a fundamental economic practice, a method of organizing human activities, an idea of itself, and/or a mathematical relationship or formula,” (Final Act. 2), and that the limitations comprise an abstract idea similar to “the concept of comparing new and stored information using rules to identify options” (Ans. 3—4). The Examiner further notified the Appellants that there are no meaningful limitations that transform the claims into something significantly more than the abstract idea itself (Final Act. 2—3). The Examiner, thus, set forth sufficient reasons in properly setting forth a rejection of the claims under § 101 such that the burden shifted to Appellants to explain why the claims are patent-eligible. Further, we are aware of no controlling authority that requires the Office to provide factual evidence to support a finding that a claim is directed to an abstract idea. Nor, contrary to Appellants’ suggestion (see Appeal Br. 12), did this Board hold, in Ex parte Renald Poisson, Appeal 5 Appeal 2016-005127 Application 14/296,098 2012-011084 (PTAB 2015), that there is any such requirement.4 There is no specific requirement that the Examiner must provide “material reasoning, rationale, or factual support” (Reply Br. 2) in determining that the claims are directed to an abstract idea. See Alice, 134 S. Ct. at 2355—57; see also para. IV July 2015 Update: Subject Matter Eligibility (“Update”) to 2014 Interim Guidance on Subject Matter Eligibility (2014IEG), 79 Fed. Reg. 74618 (Dec. 16, 2014). The courts consider the determination of whether a claim is eligible (which involves identifying whether an exception such as an abstract idea is being claimed) to be a question of law. Accordingly, courts do not rely on evidence that a claimed concept is a judicial exception, and in most cases resolve the ultimate legal conclusion on eligibility without making any factual findings. Update 6. (emphases added); cf. In re Fisher, 421 F.3d 1365, 1372 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (“The MPEP and Guidelines ‘are not binding on this court.’”); and MPEP, Foreword (“The Manual does not have the force of law or the force of the rules in Title 37 of the Code of Federal Regulations.”). Instead, the Federal Circuit has repeatedly noted that “the prima facie case is merely a procedural device that enables an appropriate shift of the burden of production.” Hyatt v. Dudas, 492 F.3d. 1365, 1369 (Fed. Cir. 2007) (citing In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d 1443, 1445 (Fed. Cir. 1992)). The court has, thus, held that the USPTO carries its procedural burden of establishing a prima facie case when its rejection satisfies the requirements of 35 U.S.C. § 132 by notifying the applicant of the reasons for rejection, “together with such information and references as may be useful in judging 4 We would not be bound, in any event, by a non-precedential decision of a different panel of the Board. 6 Appeal 2016-005127 Application 14/296,098 of the propriety of continuing the prosecution of [the] application.” See In re Jung, 637 F.3d 1356, 1362 (Fed. Cir. 2011). Thus, all that is required of the Office is that it set forth the statutory basis of the rejection in a sufficiently articulate and informative manner as to meet the notice requirement of § 132. Id.\ see also Chester v. Miller, 906 F.2d 1574, 1578 (Fed. Cir. 1990) (Section 132 “is violated when the rejection is so uninformative that it prevents the applicant from recognizing and seeking to counter the grounds for rejection.”). As discussed above, the Examiner has done so. Turning to the first step of the Alice framework, the Examiner finds that the claims are directed to “the abstract idea of a fundamental economic practice, a method of organizing human activities, an idea of itself, and/or a mathematical relationship or formula.” Final Act. 2. The Examiner further finds that “claim 1 recites a method for generating information at a physician’s office for a patient related to a prescribed medication” (Ans. 3), and is “similar to the concept of comparing new and stored information using rules to identify options, which the courts have found to be abstract” {id. at 4). Conversely, the Appellants argue that the claims are directed to “computer networking operations among a triad of computer systems,” which is not an abstract idea. Appeal Br. 14. Thus, before determining whether the claims at issue are directed to an abstract idea, we must first determine what the claims are directed to. The “directed to” inquiry . . . cannot simply ask whether the claims involve a patent-ineligible concept, because essentially every routinely patent-eligible claim involving physical products and actions involves a law of nature and/or natural 7 Appeal 2016-005127 Application 14/296,098 phenomenon—after all, they take place in the physical world. See Mayo, 132 S. Ct. at 1293 (“For all inventions at some level embody, use, reflect, rest upon, or apply laws of nature, natural phenomena, or abstract ideas.”) Rather, the “directed to” inquiry applies a stage-one filter to claims, considered in light of the specification, based on whether “their character as a whole is directed to excluded subject matter.” Internet Patents Corp. v. Active Network, Inc., 790 F.3d 1343, 1346 (Fed. Cir. 2015); see Genetic Techs. Ltd. v. Merial L.L.C., 2016 WL 1393573, at *5 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (inquiring into “the focus of the claimed advance over the prior art”). Enfish, 822 F.3d at 1335. With respect to computer-enabled claimed subject matter, it can be helpful to determine whether “the claims at issue . . . can readily be understood as simply adding conventional computer components to well- known business practices” or not. Id. at 1338; see also Affinity Labs of Tex., LLCv. DIRECTV, LLC, 838 F.3d 1253, 1257 (Fed. Cir. 2016). In Enfish, for example, the court noted that “[sjoftware can make non-abstract improvements to computer technology just as hardware improvements can[.]” Enfish, 822 F.3d at 1335. The court put the question as being “whether the focus of the claims is on [a] specific asserted improvement in computer capabilities ... or, instead, on a process that qualifies as an ‘abstract idea’ for which computers are invoked merely as a tool.” Id. at 1335—1336. In Enfish, the court found that the “plain focus of the claims” there was on “an improvement to computer functionality itself, not on economic or other tasks for which a computer is used in its ordinary capacity.” Id at 1336. “In determining the eligibility of [Appellants’] claimed process for patent protection under § 101, their claims must be considered as a whole.” Diamond v. Diehr, 450 U.S. 175, 188 (1981). The question is whether the 8 Appeal 2016-005127 Application 14/296,098 claims as a whole “focus on a specific means or method that improves the relevant technology” or are “directed to a result or effect that itself is the abstract idea and merely invoke generic processes and machinery.” McRO, Inc. v. Bandai Namco Games Am. Inc., 837 F.3d 1299, 1314 (Fed. Cir. 2016). In this case, the claims as a whole are focused on generating and providing information related to prescribed medications.5 The preamble of claim 1 is for a “method for generating information at a physician’s office for a patient related to a prescribed medication.” Appeal Br. 20 (Claims App.). Independent claim 1 recites the limitations of providing a server and computer, entering information, requesting formation of a data structure, transmitting the data structure, using some of data structure to select content/data, requesting a communication, and sending a second data structure upon receipt of the request. Id. Dependent claims 2—12 recite limitations further defining the contents of the data structure, the functions of the content/data, the location of and apparatus for data entry, and the server, and further reciting steps of reformatting content, indicating data, and queuing the content. Id. at 20-21. The Specification provides that the invention is directed to “providing content to patients who have been prescribed medications” (Spec. 12), and, more particularly, to “systems and methods for providing targeted material to a prescription medication patient which do not require significant hardware investment and provide for 5 We note that “[a]n abstract idea can generally be described at different levels of abstraction.” Apple, Inc. v. Ameranth, Inc., 842 F.3d 1229, 1240 (Fed. Cir. 2016). The Examiner’s and Board’s “slight revision of its abstract idea analysis does not impact the patentability analysis.” Id. at 1241. 9 Appeal 2016-005127 Application 14/296,098 streamlined provision of material in a way which is more transparent to the pharmaceutical provider” (id. 112). The Appellants characterize the invention as “a specific method for automating content delivery related to prescribed medication.” Appeal Br. 16. Although we find nothing that requires the Office to cite evidence to support its conclusion that claims are directed to a fundamental economic practice, a method of organizing human activities, an idea itself, or a mathematical relationship or formula without significantly more, or to support a finding that a claim is directed to an abstract idea (see Appeal Br. 12; see also Reply Br. 3—4), the abstract idea here is similar to ones our reviewing courts have deemed ineligible. See Elec. Power Grp. LLC v. Alstom S.A., 830 F.3d 1350, 1353—54 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (collecting, analyzing, and displaying of available information in a particular field); Intellectual Ventures I LLC v. Erie Indemnity Co., 850 F.3d 1315, 1327—28 (Fed. Cir. 2017) (creating an index used to search and retrieve information stored in a database); id. at 1330 (“Remotely accessing and retrieving user-specified information is an age-old practice that existed well before the advent of computers and the Internet.”); and In re Salwan, 681 F. App’x. 938 (Fed. Cir. 2017) (Billing insurance companies and organizing patient health information was “little more than the automation of a ‘method of organizing human activity’ with respect to medical information.”). Here, the claim involves nothing more than automating the generating and providing of information without any particular inventive technology — an abstract idea. See Elec. Power Grp., 830 F.3d at 1354; Intellectual Ventures I, 850 F.3d at 1328, 1330. 10 Appeal 2016-005127 Application 14/296,098 We find unpersuasive the Appellants’ characterization of the claim as directed to “computer networking operations among a triad of computer systems.” Appeal Br. 14; see also Reply Br. 6—7. Although claim 1 recites servers and a computer, the claim does not focus on how the usage of the servers and computers leads to an improvement in the technology of servers and computers nor does it describe how the servers and computer communicate or are used aside from the broadly recited functions for performing the generating and providing information. See Intellectual Ventures /, 850 F.3d at 1329, 1330. As noted above and by the Appellants, the claims merely automate the delivery of content related to prescribed medication, without any specific technology. The “technical process” (Appeal Br. 15) involves the use of generic technology to automate the manual process of “getting current, up-to-date information directly from the manufacturer.” Id. at 17. We further find unpersuasive the Appellant’s argument that “[t]he Examiner [ijncorrectly [ajpplies the [l]aw.” Reply Br. 4 (emphasis omitted). The Examiner properly determined that the claims at issue are directed to a patent-ineligible concept in light of the Specification. Final Act. 2—3; Ans. 3. See Alice, 134 S. Ct. at 2355. The inquiry is not whether the Specification as a whole possibly describes some patent-eligible invention. Turning to the second step of the Alice framework, the Appellants assert that the claims are nonetheless directed to patent-eligible subject matter because the claims, as a whole, are directed “significantly more than an abstract idea.” Appeal Br. 16—19; see also Reply Br. 7—8. We disagree. We find unpersuasive the Appellants’ argument that claim 1 is significantly more because it is similar to the claims in DDR Holdings, LLC 11 Appeal 2016-005127 Application 14/296,098 v. Hotels.com, L.P., 773 F.3d 1245 (Fed. Cir. 2014) in being “ rooted in computer technology in that the particular computer systems recited, the creation and exchange of data among them, and the inter-relationships among those transmissions, solve a problem inherent in computer networking systems.” Appeal Br. 16; see also id. at 17—19, Reply Br. 8. In DDR Holdings, the Federal Circuit determined that the claims addressed the problem of retaining website visitors who, if adhering to the routine, conventional functioning of Internet hyperlink protocol, would be transported instantly away from a host’s website after clicking on an advertisement and activating a hyperlink. DDR Holdings, 773 F.3d at 1257. The Federal Circuit, thus, held that the claims were directed to statutory subject matter because they claim a solution “necessarily rooted in computer technology in order to overcome a problem specifically arising in the realm of computer networks.” Id. In contrast, generating and providing information related to prescribed information is not rooted in technology, but can be, and for many years has been and continues to be, performed manually. There is no indication here that the claimed invention addresses a problem specifically arising in the realm of computer networks; the Appellants do not provide adequate evidence or technical reasoning how the process improves the efficiency of the computer, as opposed to the efficiency of the process, or of any other technological aspect of the computer. Further, the problems the invention is attempting to solve are reducing the inefficiencies in distributing information caused by manufacturers “misplac[ing]” and “forgetting]” the provided information, making systems less “cumbersome and redundant,” reducing the amount of “valuable space 12 Appeal 2016-005127 Application 14/296,098 in a crowded office” for the systems, and reducing the required “maintenance and capital investment” for the systems. Appeal Br. 17 (citing Spec. H 6, 10). These are not technological problems, but business and human behavior problems. The solution of using a “web-based prescribing application” {id. (citing Spec. H 99, 105, Fig. 5)) has not been described or claimed as anything more than a generic use of existing technology performing basic, purely conventional functions of a computer. See Alice, 134 S. Ct. at 1259. The Specification supports this view in providing for generic computers and servers communicating over the Internet to perform the functions of the claim. The Appellants’ argument that the claim provides a solution of automating the process to get “current, up-to-date information directly from the manufacturer, often at the point-of-sale at the pharmacy” by “us[ing] a web-based prescribing application, but hav[ing] the content for the patient printed and delivered elsewhere,” that is rooted in technology, (Appeal Br. 17; see also Tr. 4—5) is not persuasive at least because the claims do not require printing at a point-of-sale pharmacy. Although the Specification provides for an embodiment in which the content is printed {see Spec. 1101; see also Tr. 7), claim 1 is not directed to that embodiment. See Alice, 134 S. Ct. at 2355 (discussing determining “the claims at issue”). Further, the Specification does not provide that, or how, the computer itself is technologically improved upon, what technology or technical field is improved upon, or how the interactions between the computers and servers improve that technology or technical field. The claimed limitations, alone and as an ordered combination, do not transform the generic computer into a specific machine. The functions of entering data, forming a data structure (i.e., record), transmitting the data, 13 Appeal 2016-005127 Application 14/296,098 selecting content, requesting communication, sending data are conventional, routine, and well-known and involve the normal, basic functions of a computer. The Appellants provide no evidence to the contrary.6 Rather, the Specification supports this in providing for generic computers and generic software to perform the functions. See Spec. Fig. 1, || 44—54 (describing generic computers and software); see also id. 146 (defining a computer as being generic in not being “limited to any type of computing device but is intended to be inclusive of all computational devices including, but not limited to, processing devices or processors, personal computers, work stations, servers, clients, portable computers, and hand held computers,” and software as generic software comprising “code objects, logic, or command structures, written in any language and executable in any environment designed to be executed by or on a computer”). There is no further specification of particular technology for performing the steps. See Versata Dev. Grp., Inc. v. SAP Am., Inc., 793 F.3d 1306, 1334 (Fed. Cir. 2015), cert, denied, 136 S. Ct. 2510 (2016); see also Enfish, 822 F.3d. at 1336 (focusing on whether the claim is “an improvement to [the] computer functionality itself, not on economic or other tasks for which a computer is used in its ordinary capacity”); DDR Holdings, 773 F.3d at 1256 (“[A]fter Alice, there can remain no doubt: recitation of generic computer limitations does not 6 During the Hearing, the Appellants appeared to argue that the state of the art at the time of the invention was such that the claimed functions were not well-understood, routine, and conventional of a computer. Tr. 2—5, 17. However, this argument was not raised in the Appeal or Reply Briefs and is thus considered untimely. 37 C.F.R. § 41.47(e)(1). We note that the Appellants have provided no evidence regarding the state of the art at the time of the invention. See Tr. 14, 17. 14 Appeal 2016-005127 Application 14/296,098 make an otherwise ineligible claim patent-eligible. . . . The bare fact that a computer exists in the physical rather than purely conceptual realm ‘is beside the point.’” (internal citation omitted) (quoting Alice, 134 S. Ct. at 2358)). “In order for the addition of a machine to impose a meaningful limit on the scope of a claim, it must play a significant part in permitting the claimed method to be performed, rather than function solely as an obvious mechanism for permitting a solution to be achieved more quickly, i.e., through the utilization of a computer for performing calculations.” Versata, 793 F.3d at 1335 (quoting SiRF Tech., Inc. v. Int’l Trade Comm ’n, 601 F.3d 1319, 1333 (Fed. Cir. 2010)). Here, the servers, computer, and software do not meet this test, but instead functions solely as mechanisms for the entering, selecting, and transmitting of data to be performed more quickly. The introduction of a computer/server/software to implement an abstract idea is not a patentable application of the abstract idea. Alice, 134 S. Ct. at 2357-58. We further find unpersuasive the Appellants’ argument that the claim is significantly more than an abstract idea because it is novel and unobvious over the prior art. Reply Br. 8. An abstract idea does not transform into an inventive concept just because the prior art does not disclose or suggest it. See Mayo, 132 S. Ct. at 1304—05. “Groundbreaking, innovative, or even brilliant discovery does not by itself satisfy the § 101 inquiry.” Myriad, 133 S. Ct. at 2117. Indeed, “[t]he ‘novelty’ of any element or steps in a process, or even of the process itself, is of no relevance in determining whether the subject matter of a claim falls within the § 101 categories of possibly patentable subject matter.” Diehr, 450 U.S. at 188—89 (emphasis added); see also Mayo, 132 S. Ct. at 1303—04 (rejecting “the Government’s invitation to 15 Appeal 2016-005127 Application 14/296,098 substitute §§ 102, 103, and 112 inquiries for the better established inquiry under § 101”). Based on the foregoing, we are not persuaded that the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. § 101. Therefore, we sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claim 1 and of claims 2—12, that fall with claim 1. DECISION The Examiner’s rejection of claims 1—12 under 35 U.S.C. § 101 is AFFIRMED. No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(l)(iv). AFFIRMED 16 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation