“You think Rader, Newman, and Linn will hold that any claim that begins ‘A computer-implemented method’ is 101 eligible.”

First off, the claim is to a data processing system comprising a data storage unit and a computer – not a method. Try to actually understand what is being claimed before going hyperbolic.

“What’s the rationale?”

Because the use of a concrete machine is where I suspect they’ll draw the line between abstract and not-abstract.

The “abstract idea” test is unworkable. It is extremely fact dependent. The Supreme Court’s distaste for a “bright line test” has made 101 in absolute morass. 101 was never intended to be a tricky test. Is it a process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter? Yes … then move to 102/103. Nearly 60 years after 35 USC 101 hit the books, and we know less about what it supposedly encompassed today than we did 60 years ago or 40 years ago or 20 years ago or 10 years ago.

Your distaste for certain patents notwithstanding, your arguments against these types of patents are policy arguments – not arguments based upon the text of 35 USC 101. By trying to shoehorn your arguments into 35 USC 101, you are left arguing that a process is not a process and a machine is not a machine.

Granted, some of those arguments have been persuasive on the process front. However, if they prevail on the machine front, there isn’t a patent to a machine out there that couldn’t be attacked as merely being the physical embodiment of some “abstract idea” – the reason being is that all patented machines start out as an abstract idea (i.e., the inventor’s inventive idea). Then we are left with figuring out how abstract is too abstract – no bright line test there.

Also, if you can argue that a machine falls under the “abstract idea” exception, then it is short leap to argue that manufactures and compositions of matter can also fall under the “abstract idea” exception. Like you, the people who have an axe to grind against a particular technology will use that rational to argue that certain types of technology are too abstract. It is also too clear to me (and I think Rader, Newman, and Linn) that arguments based 101 are being used as surrogate for what should be policy arguments presented to Congress. I suspect that they want no part of it.