ESP Wiki is looking for moderators and active contributors!
ATT v. Excel ruling by US CAFC on 14 April 1999
Cited in ESP's brief for Bilski v. Kappos (2009, USA) as "172 F.3d 1352, 1356-59 (Fed. Cir. 1999)".
This ruling is one of three which Ben Klemens argues wrongly applied the Diehr ruling by using the "as a whole" test without using the "significant post-solution activity" or "transformation" tests.
Thus, the Alappat inquiry simply requires an examination of the contested claims to see if the claimed subject matter as a whole is a disembodied mathematical concept representing nothing more than a "law of nature" or an "abstract idea," or if the mathematical concept has been reduced to some practical application rendering it "useful."