Greggy McWeggy, down below: Certain on these boards (e.g., MM) believe that all functions executed on a processor are inherent in the processor itself.

That’s a very silly misrepresentation. What I believe is that an old processor that was designed for the purpose of carrying out instructions to perform logic operations on data does not become a “new machine” when it … receives and carries out the instructions that it was designed to receive and carry out. The logical operations themselves are ineligible on their own terms (nothing remotely controversial about that), for reasons that are well understood and admitted by intellectually honest people throughout the legal system (including Congress). The mere recitation of a ubiquitous prior art machine can not confer eligibility upon the instructions, nor can it confer eligibility upon the logical operations. What could confer eligibility upon those instructions or logical operations? Simple: the recitation of non-obvious objective physical structure, i.e., a legally inventive solution to the alleged problem being solved, as opposed to some vaporous handwaving about “configured to” functionality.

the better argument is that—just as not all materials are “inherently” disclosed by the disclosure of atomic elements from which such materials are constructed—so too, not all functions of a processor are inherently disclosed in the disclosure of a processor.

See above, Greg. This is, in fact, a terrible argument and there is literally no patent jurist anywhere on earth that will accept your argument once your opponent (i.e., me) points out to the world (for the zillionth time) that your analogy falls apart at the point where valid, eligible patent claims to “new materials” necessarily recite the non-obvious arrangement/amounts/configurations of ‘atomic elements’.

The only “exception” that ever existed to this rule was the so-called “antibody exception” (now completely eviscerated), which was never upheld by any court upon challenge. Note also that the antibody exception was admitted to be an exception to the rule. That alone sets it apart from the patenting of logic “on a computer” which is still treated as if it flows naturally from existing law when, in fact, the “on a computer” exception to the patenting of logic was created out of thin air by some incredibly short-sighted jurists.

By the way, has anybody noticed a massive decline in the production of novel antibodies after the complete evisceration of the antibody exception? Me neither. What about you, Greg?