The Supreme Court is very clear. If your robot is a new machine or a new and useful improvement to an old robot, the USPTO can award you a patent. If your invention contains no more inventive concept than applying an existing pi-making robot to your grandmother's pie recipe then it is not a patentable new robot invention. As with Flook, baking pies to a recipe is prior art. Even if the robot changes the baking temperature limits, ingredients and cooking process to meet your grandma's recipe, that is not an inventive concept.

True, but if your robot didn't previously know how to bake. And you introduced software that gave it this novel new enhancement/upgrade. Is it then not a machine containing a new innovative concept?

I would venture that the recipe would be the equivalent of content, where the ability to interpret baked goods recipes as the equivalent of software.

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• No - Authored by: Ian Al on Tuesday, October 16 2012 @ 05:28 AM EDT
  • FINALLY! EUREKA! - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, October 16 2012 @ 04:34 PM EDT