From pages 36-37:

One of the separate opinions in this case, concurring in part in the judgment, takes aim at this opinion, asserting that thte system claims here are simply claims to a patent-eligible machine, a tangible item one can put on one's desk. Machines are unquestionably eligible for patenting, states the opinion, although the system claims here clearly track the method claims that the separate opinion concedes are not patent eligible.

That conclusion is surely correct as an abstract proposition. A particular computer system, composed of wires, plastic, and silicon, is no doubt a tangible machine. But that is not the question. The question we must consider is whether a patent claim that ostensibly describes such a system on its face represents something more than an abstract idea in legal substance. Claims to computers were, and still are, eligible for patent. No question should have arisen concerning the eligibility of claims to basic computer hardware under § 101 when such devices were first invented. But we are living and judging now (or at least as of the patents' priority dates), and have before us not the patent eligibility of specific types of computers or computer components, but computers that have routinely been adapted by software consisting of abstract ideas, and claimed as such, to do all sorts of tasks that formerly were performed by humans. And the Supreme Court has told us that, while avoiding confusion between § 101 and §§ 102 and 103, merely adding existing computer technology to abstract ideas—mental steps—does not as a matter of substance convert an abstract idea into a machine.

I think they (well, at least five out of ten) get it!

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