Background
Edward S. Lowry filed a computer software patent application in which he described an application program that managed database information by using software data structures that he called "attribute data objects" (ADOs). An ADO is a single primitive data element "compris ngsequences of bits which are stored in the memory as electrical (or magnetic) signals that represent information." According to Lowry's patent application, " attribute expresses the idea that one thing is attributed to another thing." Thus, the Attributive data model capitalizes on the concept that a database is a collection of attributions, whereby information is represented in terms of its characteristics and relationships to other information. Lowry asserted that using ADOs provided a more efficient method for storing, retrieving, adding, and removing information from a database. Claim 1 was considered representative. It provided:1. A memory for storing data for access by an application program being executed on a data processing system, comprising: a data structure stored in said memory, said data structure including information resident in a database used by said application program and including: a plurality of attribute data objects stored in said memory, each of said attribute data objects containing different information from said database; a single holder attribute data object for each of said attribute data objects, each of said holder attribute data objects being one of said plurality of attribute data objects, a being-held relationship existing between each attribute data object and its holder attribute data object, and each of said attribute data objects having a being-held relationship with only a single other attribute data object, thereby establishing a hierarchy of said plurality of attribute data objects; a referent attribute data object for at least one of said attribute data objects, said referent attribute data object being nonhierarchically related to a holder attribute data object for the same at least one of said attribute data objects and also being one of said plurality of attribute data objects, attribute data objects for which there exist only holder attribute data objects being called element data objects, and attribute data objects for which there also exist referent attribute data objects being called relation data objects; and an apex data object stored in said memory and having no being-held relationship with any of said attribute data objects, however, at least one of said attribute data objects having a being-held relationship with said apex data object.The examiner rejected all of Lowry's claims as so-called
Federal Circuit opinion
On appeal, the Federal Circuit panel reversed the Board's rejection of the patent application. The court held, per Judge Rader, that all of Lowry's software data structure claims were patentable. It disagreed, first, that the ADOs were printed matter. It said that a data structure stored in a memory does not convey "intelligence to a reader." It had to "be processed . . . by a machine, the computer'" to do that. That kept the ADOs from being printed matter: "The printed matter cases have no factual relevance where the invention as defined by the claims requires that the information be processed not by the mind but by a machine, the computer." The court also maintained that Lowry's claimed data structure did sufficiently interact with the substrate (the computer memory) to satisfy the functional relationship standard. The court asserted that, at the lowest physical level, storing data structures into a memory actually imposed a physical organization on that memory Moreover, the court said, storing the ADOs into computer memory resulted in more efficient computer operation.''Lowry'', 32 F.3d at 1584. There was a functional relationship between the ADOs and memory, the court maintained, even though a human being could not see any physical changes. The examiner and Board had denied this. They said that the provision of new signals to be stored by the computer does not make it a new machine, i.e. the computer is structurally the same, "no matter how new, useful and unobvious the result." The court replied: To this question we say that if a machine is programmed in a certain new and unobvious way, it is physically different from the machine without that program; its memory elements are differently arranged. The fact that these physical changes are invisible to the eye should not tempt us to conclude that the machine has not been changed. The court stated: "The PTO did not establish that the ADOs, within the context of the entire claims, lack a new and nonobvious functional relationship with the memory." Under prevailing Federal Circuit patent law doctrine, the court noted, it was the burden of the PTO to prove that this relationship was obvious. Since that had not been done, the Federal Circuit said, the rejection must be reversed.Impact and aftermath
The ''Lowry'' case marked a turning point in the Federal Circuit's patent-eligibility analysis of computer software cases and the PTO's policy about issuing such patents. The Federal Circuit began to abandon the policy reflected in such cases as '' In re Schrader'', which emphasized the importance of hardware elements to provide patent eligibility for software, and developed its own standards for patent eligibility that were different from those of Supreme Court precedents. Eventually, according to a 2006 dissenting opinion of several Supreme Court Justices, the Federal Circuit evolved a legal standard for patent eligibility under which it held claims patent eligible "where this Court has held the contrary." After the ''Lowry'' decision, the PTO stopped resisting the grant of software-related patents. In a series of cases from ''References
External links
*{{caselaw source , case = ''In re Lowry'', 32 F.3d 1579 (Fed. Cir. 1994) , courtlistener =https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/676605/in-re-edward-s-lowry-serial-no-07181105/ , justia =https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/32/1579/633609/ , other_source1 = OpenJurist , other_url1 =https://openjurist.org/32/f3d/1579 , other_source2 = Google Scholar , other_url2 =https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=17123546973085085592 Software patent case law United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit cases United States patent case law 1994 in United States case law