In the right column, the steps or elements of a well known business concept or a way of organizing human activity are listed.
Under the Supreme Court's decision in Alice v. CLS Bank such a patent claim is usually invalidated as a mere abstract idea (unless implemented in an inventive manner).
[4] An example of such a table appears in the defendant's briefs in Walker Digital, LLC v. Google, Inc.[5] The court said that the chart showed: "As the following hypothetical [case] (articulated by Google, and not meaningfully distinguished by Walker) shows, these steps can and routinely are performed by, for example, human job headhunters."
This is the chart from the Walker Digital case: As a result of its review of the chart, the Walker Digital court concluded: Even after carefully reviewing the parties’ briefs and the patents, and questioning the parties about Google’s hypothetical at the hearing, the Court is unable to discern any reason why, in Google’s hypothetical, Carol would not be liable for infringement of Walker’s ’270 patent.
Based on the undisputed evidence, and drawing all reasonable inferences in Walker’s favor, the Court concludes that every step of claim 1 of the ’270 patent is performed in Google’s routine headhunting hypothetical.