1982) [3]—which attempted to comply with then-recent decisions of the Supreme Court concerning software-related patent claims.
The aim of the test was to allow claims that do not attempt to monopolize traditionally patent ineligible subject matter, such as mathematics, thinking, and laws of nature.
The current legal test for patent eligibility is stated in the Supreme Court's decisions in Bilski v. Kappos, Mayo v. Prometheus, and Alice v. CLS Bank.
The court stated that the second Freeman step "involves examination of the claim 'to ascertain whether in its entirety it wholly preempts [the] algorithm.
If, however, the mathematical algorithm is merely presented and solved by the claimed invention, as was the case in Benson and Flook, and is not applied in any manner to physical elements or process steps, no amount of post-solution activity will render the claim statutory; nor is it saved by a preamble merely reciting the field of use of the mathematical algorithm.
"[11] Now, the court reformulated the test in these terms: Walter should be read as requiring no more than that the algorithm be "applied in any manner to physical elements or process steps," provided that its application is circumscribed by more than a field of use limitation or non-essential post-solution activity.
Under the final version of the Freeman-Walter-Abele test, any placement of any conventional obvious apparatus in the claim seemed to be enough for the court to find the subject matter patent eligible.
[13] This state of affairs was burlesqued in the mythical "Case of the Automated Substance Spreader," a computerized system for spreading fertilizer.
If a mathematical algorithm produced a "useful, concrete and tangible result" the claim was statutory subject matter.
The Freeman-Walter-Abele test was repudiated in 1998 in State Street Bank, which described it as having "little, if any, applicability to determining the presence of statutory subject matter.
"[citation needed] However, it continued to have use in the patent office, which viewed it as much the same as the "practical application" and "useful, concrete and tangible results" tests.