Ethics, Week 10, Nov 10 Workplace ethics working with your boss Challenger launch engineers: flight was Jan 28, 1986 O-ring problems on the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) were known for a decade recommended min temp: 53° F "Redline" temp: 40° F temp on launch day: 31° F O-ring seal on SRB failed due to cold weather flame leaked out, and eventually set fire to the main fuel tank The difference between "who is willing to approve the launch?" versus "who is willing to veto the launch?" Managers want yes/no answers; engineers give floating-point answers. Both at NASA and at the SRB contractor Morton Thiokol, managers put engineers on the spot by demanding yes/no answers. paper 2: * Ellen's discovery affects only herself and other employees * No need for *public* notice * Effects are for both past and future * future: will employees know about monitoring? * past : will they be held to account? * Ellen: will she make enemies here? * managers: the only thing Ellen knows is that one wasn't where official records said he was. Ellen does *not* know if this is actually a problem; he may have been giving special sales tours. In general, frank discussions with ones manager are not only appropriate but *required*. ======= That said, however, managers do not necessarily respond positively to "ethical" arguments. Here are a few alternatives: Bringing ethical issues to the attention of your supervisor Programmers: quality issues Network admins: security loopholes, excessive security that users will likely find ways to bypass software licensing issues backup procedures DB admins data normalization issues security access issues Websites quality of information Nobody wants to make a Career Limiting Move BUT your boss doesn't want something to blow up later. * Explain likely & potential consequences Loss of employees? Morale? * Discuss LIABILITY * Discuss how this is going to look later * Recast the question * Ultimately, respect management's right to make decisions Going over your boss's head: Generally a CLM, BUT sometimes there are specific avenues. Challenger engineers * none would say "yes" to "are you claiming the ship will crash" * none would say "no" to "are you claiming the ship is safe" How managers tend to think, versus techies bottom line means a lot future consequences can impact this Ethics and the notion of the Social Contract: JJ Rousseau, 1762 Legal liability: "yes, but we don't wanna get sued...." Whistleblower protections: federal & state law, company policy Writing a CYA memo Richard M Daley and that guy who first noticed the potential leak Discuss Louis Koncza, Chief Engineer for chicago. Wrote memo to boss, DOT head John LaPlante, about leaking in the coal-railway tunnels under the chicago river. But the memo asked for money for repairs and didn't make it clear it was an emergency. LaPlante authorized, for example, a BIDDING process. Daley fired Koncza, for failing to convey sufficient urgency, and because "sending a memo to a supervisor does not absolve you". John LaPlante was fired too (Koncza's boss) "Daley did what he had to do" ================================================================ ================================================================ ================================================================ PATENTS: Baase §4.7 Do they help advance progress? or hinder it? Intended to cover INVENTIONS rather than IDEAS. If you have an idea to sell hamburgers with salsa, or newspapers & beer together, or to create a website where people can post their own stuff, that's an IDEA. It can't be protected: everyone else is entitled to copy it freely. ============================================================= My (former) three-part test on when it is appropriate to recognize software patents: 1. The Supreme Court has turned down your last appeal 2. Federal marshals surround your cabin in the woods 3. You are out of ammo This could probably get me in trouble. ============================================================= 35 U.S.C. §101 (patent-eligibility law): Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title. ============================================================= Pharmaceutical patents: here the patent system IS effective at encouraging investment: * Development costs are HUGE (~200 million) * Copying is not much harder than for software One weirdness: patents "for the use of"; someone can, if drug X is in the public domain, patent the use of X to treat disease Y. In *practice* this is not much of a problem. Third-world issues with pharma patents ============================================================= Four kinds of software-patent issues: * problems with the patent system generally * problems with the patent office as applied to software * problems with business-method patents, which until 2005 required involvement of "technological arts" * fundamental problems with software patents Classic "broad" patent: Wright brothers patent on wing-warping This later led to the development of ailerons, but a court ruled the Wright patent still applied ============== History of software patents for a long time, software was held to be unpatentable, as mathematical algorithms are unpatentable. 1972: Gottschalk v Benson: can't patent a mathematical algorithm (in this case a number-format-conversion algorithm) 1973: ATT somehow manages to patent setuid bit, claiming it's hardware. This patent was dedicated to the public domain in 1979. 1981: Diamond v Diehr: computer + machine IS patentable. For a long time after, software patents always described the software in combination with some hardware device. Diamond v Diehr: SCOTUS says that an invention isn't automatically *un*patentable just because it contains an algorithm But PTO & lower courts read in the converse: algorithms are patentable Note that the current business-world baseline thus rests on USPTO policy and lower-court case law, NOT congress or SCOTUS. Problem of "non-obviousness" the rules state that it's not enough to prove it's obvious *today*. Uh oh. That becomes an extremely difficult burden. Problem of "prior art" did someone else discover it first? often there are arguments about this. Broad patents for fundamental new ideas, narrow patents for improvements compatibility issues: What if the default, standard implementation is patented? GIF => PNG MP3 => ogg vorbis software patent v copyright Supreme-court cases limit the word "process" in §101 ============================================= Business patents: Once the USPTO began patenting software as part of a business process, it became too difficult to distinguish between software-as-algorithmic-invention and software-as-business-method. So the USPTO reversed its longstanding refusal to issue "business-method" patents. Exhibit A: Amazon "one-click" patent, # 5960411 Several more mundane patents on online shopping carts IBM[?]'s patent on suggesting new purchases based on past ones This took off in earnest in 1998 with "state street bank" case: regarding calculation of value of investment portfolios. Until 2005, the USPTO required some "involvement of the technological arts" in business-method patents, but they then dropped that requirement as too hard to enforce. However, there is still a great deal of overlap with business-method and software patents. Things MAY be reined in by the recent _Bilski_ case. ============================================= Some software patents xor cursor cpu Stack Pointer register Using an xml document to describe the grammar of another xml document (Part of Scientigo's patent suite on xml) British Telecom patent on the hyperlink, files 1976, granted 1989 Altavista patents on "web searching" compression algorithms RSA encryption: patent 4405829 choose primes p and q. Reveal n=pq Find e and d so x^(ed) = x mod n (this is not hard) Common values for e: 3, 5, 17, 257, 65537 (n,e) is the public key, d is the private key Uses STANDARD ARITHMETIC in its calculations The patent is for the APPLICATION of these standard methods to encryption! The RSA patents finally expired Compton 1989 patent on multimedia, despite Apple Hypercard in ~1987. Steir's patent 5,060,171 on artificially adding hair to a person's image [Garfinkel article] Eolas v Microsoft: About a way for running "applets" in a browser window. Is this really an "invention"? NTP v RIM: the blackberry patent mp3: lots of development went into this Lempel-Ziv / LZW compression natural-order recalculation in spreadsheets: Cell A depends on B if A needs B's value in its formula Rule: Before calculating A, calculate all cells A depends on. Duh. The algorithm is called "topological sort"; published in the CS literature in 1963. Rene K. Pardo and Remy Landau filed in 1971: U.S. Patent 4,398,249 Important case in allowing software patents (initially denied as an "algorithm") Spreadsheets were a brilliant idea (Dan Bricklin, VisiCalc?) but not order of recalculation. =========================== MS has tried to patent FAT disk format. Their request was turned down. ==================== compatibility issues: GIF => PNG MP3 => ogg vorbis PTO (Patent & Trademark Office) problems: * researching "prior art" * secrecy of the process ignorance is no defense: "submarine" patents entire process is secret: you can be making good-faith effort to be noninfringing and get hit with a huge verdict. wilful: you had advance notice of infringing. Your belief that the patent was invalid is NOT a defense. Damages automatically triple. Three groups: * small inventors * large corporations * patent-holding companies how large corporations manage: patent banks legal departments cross-licensing small inventors: market your invention yourself?? sell to a holding company These are tricky places. They produce nothing, they interfere with progress, but they *do* produce a market for new patents. Open source voip Legal advantage of small inventor: somewhat diminished with rise in legal fees & increased ambiguity But small inventors *can* still sell to patent-holding companies. Legal situation of large corporations: * hard for small inventors to sue them * can cross-license =============================================== Is software legitimately a special case? Eolas v Microsoft: About a way for running "applets" in a browser window. Is this really an "invention"? Microsoft v Eolas (+ Univ of California, as part of UCSF) MS lost; ordered to pay $521 million Patent covers "a system allowing a user of a browser program ... to access and execute an embedded program object," or small computer programs, often referred to as "applets" or "plug-ins." Filed 1994, granted 1998, USPTO review 2004, upheld 2005 "Viola" prior art: may or may not be Viola was found by the district court to have been "abandoned", but the circuit court found that Viola version 1.0 was "abandoned" only in the sense that it was replaced with version 2.0. Part of the technical issue was about the meaning of the term "executable application". The court allegedly gave this broad meaning. Microsoft claimed it only meant "standalone applications". Eolas started by Michael Doyle, faculty member of UCSF. UC Berkeley has a financial interest in the patent. Patent: 5,838,906 2007: MS has claim *they* invented it; this loses in Sept, but Eolas & MS settle in August ========================================================== ========================================================== NTP v RIM (Research In Motion): maker of Blackberry Was this really a "business method" patent?? The software case is VERY weak. See http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar06/3087 Thomas Campana filed his patents in 1991. Lawsuit broght in 2000, after RIM (and others) wouldn't agree to license. Campana died in October 2004. RIM settled for $612 million in Mar 2006 (part of the settlement is that there are no ongoing royalty payments.) Patent has been challenged, PTO retracted one or two of the patents in Feb 2006 Judge (Spencer) in NTP v RIM refused to stay the case pending further USPTO findings: Just a day after a judge in the NTP-RIM patent fight said that he would not wait for the US Patent Office to complete a review of NTP's patents, that same Patent Office announced a "non-final" ruling on one of the NTP patents, suggesting that the original patent might not be valid. -- techdirt.com NTP owned nothing but patents, but Thomas Campana -- co-founder -- did "invent" the technology. So NTP is not a classic "patent troll". Campana grew up in Marquette Park, btw. Case was before Judge James Spencer of the US District Court for Eastern Virginia, known as the home of the "rocket docket": part of the court's culture was strict adherence to timetables. RIM engaged the mega-lawfirm of Jones,Day, which irritated Judge Spencer regularly (probably with delay tactics). Bad Idea. RIM put on a demo of some supposedly pre-Campana text-messaging software, BUT a major part of it was post-Campana's-patent. Another bad idea. Rim failed to prove the patent invalid in court. But the burden of proof was on them. With the USPTO, the burden of proof was on NTP. Original verdict: $33 million RIM could have been liable for triple damages if infringement was found to be "willful". However, Judge Spencer compromised here on 42%, raising the award to $47 million. Central idea of NTP patent: if a wireless unit is out of range, messages are stored at Network Operations Center (NOC). This idea is a fundamental part of the original SMTP rfc 821 (August 1982) There is some confusion as to whether NTP's patents are for a SYSTEM or for a METHOD (process). If it's a method, is it a business method? Nobody disputes that RIM developed their system indepentently. Patents for genuine electronics methods are not an issue here: modulation techniques receiver--cpu interaction NTP's patents covered only the system, *not* the devices. Core problem with NTP wireless email patent: The only new element is the use of RF links in an email network. (Store-and-forward idea is acknowledged as prior art). BUT: Prior art clearly includes both the following: 1. Use of RF for IP links 2. Email based on ANY set of IP links There is room for innovation in terms of identifying the nearest wireless hub, but that's not in the patent. Real issue: patent system often ignores the fundamental CS principle of *abstraction* (ie building networks with any links) ============================== uspto.gov -> patents -> patft (uspto.gov/patft) Search by patent number: http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm Look at patents: =============== 6317592 Electronic mail system with RF communications to mobile processors This is the "newest" patent. Claim 150 was singled out as having been infringed. 6198783 System for wireless serial transmission of encoded information Modulation techniques 6067451 Electronic mail system with RF communications to mobile processors 6272190 System for wireless transmission and receiving of information and method of operation thereof uspto.gov -> patents -> patft (uspto.gov/patft) Search by patent number: http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm ================================= Appellate court notes; ruling of Aug 2, 2005 In their appeal, RIM appears to be trying to narrow the scope of the NTP claims. Somehow the assertion that there was prior art for * RF links for IP data * email over ANY kind o flink was lost. Perhaps they should have focused on the patent's own claim of prior art in trying to limit the patent claims?? Citation to Tanenbaum, _Computer Networks_ The message is next sorted by the recipient’s ISP mail server into the recipient’s particular “mailbox,” where it is stored until the recipient initiates a connection with the server and downloads the message off the server onto his or her personal machine. This configuration is commonly referred to as a “pull” system because emails cannot be distributed to the user’s machine without a connection being initiated by the user to “pull” the messages from the mail server. Pull system??? This is marketing terminology. Campana’s particular innovation was to integrate existing electronic mail systems with RF wireless communications networks. A message originating in an electronic mail system may be transmitted not only by wireline but also via RF, in which case it is received by the user and stored on his or her mobile RF receiver. Is the court suggesting that this is a "push" system? Yes, in fact. How is a blackberry different from a laptop with persistent Internet connectivity, limited to port 25 (email)? An important issue for the court was that blackberries were NOT seen as email endpoints. Rather, they were seen as portable intermediate nodes: they would receive email, they could display the email, but the email's ultimate destination was the user's laptop (via some cable). claim 248 of patent 6067451 =========================== 246. In a system comprising a communication system which transmits electronic mail containing information, with the electronic mail being inputted to the communication system from a plurality of processors, a RF system and an interface connecting the communication system to the RF system with the information contained in the electronic mail and an identification of a RF device in the RF system being transmitted from the interface to the RF system and broadcast by the RF system to an identified RF device, the identified RF device comprising: a RF receiver, which receives the information when the identification of the device is detected in a broadcast by the RF system to the RF receiver; and a memory, coupled to the RF receiver, which stores the information received by the RF receiver contained in the electronic mail inputted to the communication system. 247. The RF device in accordance with claim 246 further comprising: a processor, coupled to the memory, which after the information has been outputted from the memory, processes the information. 248. The RF device in accordance with claim 247 further comprising: at least one application program, executed by the processor, which processes the information. claim 150 of patent 6317592 =========================== 150. In a communication system comprising a wireless system which communication system transmits electronic mail inputted to the communication system from an originating device which executes electronic mail programming to originate the electronic mail, mobile processors which execute electronic mail programming to function as a destination of electronic mail, and a destination processor to which the electronic mail is transmitted from the originating device and after reception of the electronic mail by the destination processor, information contained in the electronic mail and an identification of a wireless device in the wireless system are transmitted by the wireless system to the wireless device and from the wireless device to one of the mobile processors, the wireless device and one mobile processor comprising: a wireless receiver connected to the one mobile processor with the one mobile processor receiving the information contained in the electronic mail after the identification of the wireless device is detected by the wireless receiver in a broadcast by the wireless system. ============================== RIM argues that the district court erred in construing the claim terms: (a) “electronic mail system” (appearing in the ’960, ’670, and ’172 patents); (b) “gateway switch” (appearing in the ’960 patent); and (c) “originating processor” and “originated information” (appearing in the ’960, ’670, and ’592 patents). It seems clear that the district court did NOT grasp the generality of any of these three terms, but the appeals court did NOT overrule. Instead they found ... the court looks to those sources available to the public that show what a person of ordinary skill in the art would have understood disputed claim language to mean RIM argues there are two ordinary meanings of “electronic mail system”: a broad definition that encompasses “communicating word processors, PCs, telex, facsimile, videotex, voicemail and radio paging systems (beepers)” and a narrow definition that defines the term in the context of “pull” technology In other words, RIM argues that NTP's use of "electronic mail system" when discussing prior art meant "pull-based email system" ====================================================================== ====================================================================== Alcatel-Lucent v Microsoft: won 1,500 million in infringement suit about mp3 decoders Feb 22, 2007 MS countersued for other patents The judge eventually set aside the damages, and the appellate court agreed. ================= Who holds the MP3 patents? * Fraunhofer Society and Fraunhofer IIS * Thompson Consumer Electronics * Alcatel-Lucent * Texas MP3 Technologies * Sisvel Aug 6, 2007: MS won new trial MS is now suing A-L for other patents. check out mp3licensing.com (Thompson) Royalty Rates: basic mp3 decoder: $0.75/unit mp3 was published in 1991. Will all US mp3 patents expire in 2011? Original holder: Thompson Consumer Electronics & Fraunhofer Institute Still holds "core" mp3 patents. Patent claimants: Thompson Fraunhofer Sisvel / Audio MPEG Texas MP3 Technologies Alcatel-Lucent To date, (some) patent holders have announced that no action will be taken against open-source decoders. ========================================================== Patent reform: PTO trying to learn more prior art Watchdog groups doing same Trivial prior art is harder and harder to patent Still problems with patented protocols Patented storylines [!] ========================================================= ============================== Note that patents are for the use of an idea in a specific context: * prime factorization FOR THE PURPOSE OF ENCRYPTION * xor FOR THE PURPOSE OF ERASING AND REDRAWING THE MOUSE * digital scanning for the purpose of storing bank records Patent problems: submarine patents: you don't hear about them until too late! prior art: hard to find, hard to document, trivial ideas were never written down! This will go away. non-obviousness: difficult to contest many ideas go into one program! Technology evolves extremely rapidly Violates settled expectations (important part of law!) What's patented seems to be more a matter of chance than anything else. ignorance is no defense: "submarine" patents entire process is secret: you can be making good-faith effort to be noninfringing and get hit with a huge verdict. wilful: you had advance notice of infringing. Your belief that the patent was invalid may NOT be a defense, although it has been accepted as a defense in some cases. Damages automatically triple. ====================== Is software legitimately a special case? Or is it just that there are lots of small-time whiners in software who want to profit from the work of others without paying? * # of innovations used * problem with prior art * mathematical nature * prior art and non-obviousness * pace of computing inventiveness * rate of radical v incremental change * open source <===*************************** * patented standards * software patents have had the effect of postponing adoption until patent expires (cf James Gosling's first language) * 20 years is much too long EU Parliament recently voted 648-14 AGAINST the EPO (European Patent Office) directive. software issues: * software has way too many features, compared to ordinary inventions. Licensing 1000 features at 1%-of-revenue each is just not going to work. * prior art is very hard to find, as many patented ideas were not written down BECAUSE THEY WERE OBVIOUS. ================= Who are the stakeholders in software patents? Compare pharmaceuticals http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2005/pulpit_20050818_000863.html "Do you feel helped by patent reform?" Three groups: * small inventors * large corporations * patent-holding companies (eg trolls) how large corporations manage: patent banks legal departments cross-licensing small inventors: market your invention yourself?? sell to a holding company These are tricky places. They produce nothing, they interfere with progress, but they *do* produce a market for new patents. Open source voip mp3 to date, *some* patent holders have announced that no action will be taken against open-source *de*coders. =============================== Role of "patent trolls", or patent licensing firms ("troll" as in "the troll under the bridge, demanding tolls", not "trolling" as in fishing for "flames") Note that the established-company-versus-established-company defense of a "patent bank" is useless here. =============================== Patents and standards-setting Company A participates in creation of a standard; they suggest solution S for a particular issue. After the standard is widely adopted, company A announces that they have patented S, and that they will license it for a significant fee. N-data patent on ethernet speed autonegotiation: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080123-ftc-defends-ethernet-forces-patent-troll-back-under-bridge.html =============================== ======= DataTreasury (datatreasury.com) They have developed technology for storage of digital images of bank checks. From their website: The Corporation was founded in 1998 and was granted its first two Network architectural patents (5,910,988 and 6,032,137) in 1999 and 2000, respectively. The patents detail the important and revolutionary aspects of DataTreasury’s systems for remote image capture, document imaging, centralized processing and electronic storage. Our innovations were particularly noted for enhanced security, fault tolerance and high reliability. These key elements form the underpinnings of DataTreasury’s technology. From politico.com/news/stories/0308/9202.html The company had benefited from a controversial 1998 court ruling that broadened the definition of a patent to include business processes. Patent reform act singles out this patent for congressional revocation ========================================================== =========================== Stallman issues * impossible to search patent database * license costs fail to take # of innovations into account * deep problems with prior art: often too trivial Others: * huge social costs to uphold weak patents Barriers to entry Patent Trolls: companies that have no assets but patent claims, and don't attempt to produce anything but simply collect. Is this bad? ========================================================== Patent reform: PTO trying to learn more prior art Watchdog groups doing same Trivial prior art is harder and harder to patent Still problems with patented protocols Patented storylines [!] ========================================================= =========================== Patent and open source The open-source community is a STRONG proponent of eliminating software patents. Does the open-source community deserve: * an applet-aware browser? * an mp3 player? * a gif viewer? * other ideas that are patented? Does MS intend to destroy or hobble or marginalize linux through patents? It is very well documented that the patent process has a very NEGATIVE impact on open-source development, and on generally accepted software adoption. So if the purpose of software patents is to aid technological process, and it doesn't do that, are software patents a good idea? ========================================================= Patent Reform Act of 2007: H.R. 1908 and S. 1145 did not pass (yet) * Changes in U.S. patent law o 1.1 Switch from first to invent to first to file o 1.2 Expand prior user rights, to compensate o 1.3 Publish patent applications o 1.3.5 Allow corporate filers (ie inventor's employer) ---> o 1.4 Allow pre-issuance protests by third parties o 1.5 Expand use of post-issuance reexamination and opposition proceedings o 1.6 Eliminate the "best mode" requirement (obscure) ---> o 1.7 Modify the patent law doctrine of willful infringement "willful" is a serious problem. ---> o 1.8 Modify the patent law doctrine of inequitable conduct o 1.9 Allow patent applications to be submitted by an assignee ---> o 1.10 Limit access to injunctions o Damages: must proportion to incremental improvement over prior art o Bars "tax planning" patents [!] o Bars DataTreasury from bank extortion Discuss: first-to-file: who benefits? how are small inventors affected? How are prior-art rules affected? publish applications. ======================================================================== KSR v Teleflex, April 30, 2007 Some good patent news: Teleflex had a patent on a pedal coupled to an electronic throttle control (basically cruise control). The question was whether that was "obvious" The proper question to have asked was whether a pedal designer of ordinary skill, facing the wide range of needs created by developments in the field of endeavor, would have seen a benefit to upgrading [a prior art patent] with a sensor *not* thought of it by themselves, and *not* motivated to implement the change, but simply saw the *benefit* Teaching-suggestion-motivation test: too narrow ======================================================================== Bilski case: (decision released October 30, 2008) Claimed method of managing the risk of bad weather in commodities trading. He submitted a patent application seeking exclusive rights to a method of using hedge contracts to reduce the risk that a commodity's wholesale price might change. Patent was rejected by the Patent Board of Appeals. The Board, in rejecting the claim, asked the fedearl circuit court for assistance in determining patentability of non-technological method claims. The federal circuit court did the following: The court by its own action grants a hearing en banc. The parties are requested to file supplemental briefs that should address the following questions: (1) Whether claim 1 of the 08/833,892 patent application claims patent-eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101? (the patent-eligibility rules) (2) What standard should govern in determining whether a process is patent-eligible subject matter under section 101? (3) Whether the claimed subject matter is not patent-eligible because it constitutes an abstract idea or mental process; when does a claim that contains both mental and physical steps create patent-eligible subject matter? (4) Whether a method or process must result in a physical transformation of an article or be tied to a machine to be patent-eligible subject matter under section 101? (5) Whether it is appropriate to reconsider State Street Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Financial Group, Inc., 149 F.3d 1368 (Fed. Cir. 1998), and AT&T Corp. v. Excel Communications, Inc., 172 F.3d 1352 (Fed. Cir. 1999), in this case and, if so, whether those cases should be overruled in any respect? The court *did* affirm the need for a physical transformation. Business patents, and perhaps software patents, are in TROUBLE. The question: is a patent "tailored narrowly enough to encompass only a particular application of a fundamental principle rather than to pre-empt the principle itself"? Benson: NO Diehr: YES Bilski: NO Part of the Benson ruling: Transformation and reduction of an article 'to a different state or thing' is THE clue to the patentability of a process claim that does not include particular machines. They also DISMISS the "useful, concrete, or tangible result" test: that is NOT enough to establish patentability. THey also reject the "technological arts" test (see above) that was once-upon-a-time part of the method-patent rules. They agree that it is too hard to tell whether something involves the technological arts; however, unlike the USPTO, they end up ruling the OTHER WAY; that is, to reject MORE broadly than the TA test. machine-or-transformation test: emphasize the OR. We will, however, consider some of our past cases to gain insight into the transformation part of the test. A claimed process is patent-eligible if it transforms an article into a different state or thing. This transformation must be central to the purpose of the claimed process. But the main aspect of the transformation test that requires clarification here is what sorts of things constitute "articles" such that their transformation is sufficient to impart patent-eligibility under §101. Tanning leather curing rubber (Diehr case) The raw materials of many information-age processes, however, are electronic signals and electronically-manipulated data. And some so-called business methods, such as that claimed in the present case, involve the manipulation of even more abstract constructs such as legal obligations, organizational relationships, and business risks. Which, if any, of these processes qualify as a transformation or reduction of an article into a different state or thing constituting patent-eligible subject matter? RSA? material transformation in "real" terms MP3? material transformation in "real" terms NTP? maybe no?