Martin, you are confusing what is being claimed (and what is protected by the claim relative to what is in the prior art) with actual objects that might fall within the scope of the claim. If you lack the intellectual capacity to keep these things straight, then you are not fit to have the conversation. You might as well pick up the phone and scream into Tom Cech’s face about RNA-mediated catalysis or something else that is beyond your understanding.

Either the art of encryption is being advanced, or the art of chip design.

Or both! “Advancing the art” is not an eligibility test. A new book of instructions about how to make a better choo-choo train “advances the art” of choo-choo train building but it’s still not eligible. Useful correlations “advance the art” of diagnosing diseases. They’re still not eligible. So now we move on to your next point.

what’s the difference between configured code that does work using generic gates, or gates arranged like code to do work directly?

Code is an ineligible abstraction, as is a method of writing the code (ever notice how nobody ever claims a method of typing instructions into a computer? ever wonder why that is?). A physical “gate” is an object that can be described in objective structural terms. It has measurable properties that are determinable by anyone with the tools to measure them. It has size, it has weight, it has thickness, it has density, it is composed of atoms in a particular arrangement that can be described in objective terms. These are profound and fundamental differences when compared to “code”.

What is the structure of “configured code”? How can an objective observer of “code” determine whether a “code” is “configured” or not? For example, take the following: 0101001111100101010001000101111001011001010 Is that “configured code”?

There is no meaningful difference between content arrayed as code or arrayed as gates.

“Content” is ineligible subject matter so if you are arguing that a chip is ineligible when it differs from the prior art only in terms of the “content” that is “expressed” by its recited structure, then we are in agreement. But it’s undoubtedly the case that certain well-described specific chips have improved functionality as a result of their well-described and specific structures. And those are the ones that are going to be eligible for patenting.

Note who gets left out of the patent system here: programmers and the attorneys who claim function at the level of abstraction (i.e., without reciting any novel structure). This is not a problem for anybody in the economy except for that microscopic class of individuals. There is no effect on the economy, and there is no effect on progress in the computer arts. On the contrary, expunging programming from the system will direct resources to concrete tangible improvements in hardware which is where it belongs.

Logic used by a machine to do something is work- it is not an abstraction.

Logic is an abstraction, period. Always. The machine is not an abstraction, but it can certainly be claimed as an abstraction when the only claimeddifference between the “new” machine and the old machine is its functionality. Are you starting to “get it”, Martin?

This isn’t terribly difficult. What’s difficult is accepting the result, which follows from the premise in a straight unbroken line of reasoning without any assumptions. It’s that fact which has driven the CAFC to create an incoherent mess out of what should be straightforward law. It’s as if the CAFC tasked itself with the job of explaining why gravity is illegal. They can use all the fancy self-serving language that they want but once anyone tries to shoehorn their reasoning into the rest of reality, it’s inevitably going to fall to pieces. Good for me, very bad for them.

I can see a compromise on a hard political point.

I can, too. There are an infinite number of compromises but the worst one is a pile of nonsensical judicial activist g@ rb@ge from the CAFC trying tp prop up the protection of logic and information with standard utility patents, which is what we have now.