In an opinion authored by Judge Chen (joined by Judges Lourie and Moore), the Federal Circuit held claims of three patents to be patent-ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101 because "they are directed to the abstract idea of translating a functional description of a logic circuit into a hardware component description of the logic circuit." The court therefore affirmed the district court's summary judgment of invalidity of U.S. Patent Nos. 5,530,841; 5,680,318; and 5,748,488.
Here is claim 1 of U.S. Patent No. 5,530,841, considered by the court as a representative claim:
A method for converting a hardware independent user description of a logic circuit, that includes flow control statements including an IF statement and a GOTO statement, and directive statements that define levels of logic signals, into logic circuit hardware components comprising:
converting the flow control statements and directive statements in the user description for a logic signal Q into an assignment condition AL(Q) for an asynchronous load function AL( ) and an assignment condition AD(Q) for an asynchronous data function AD( ); and
generating a level sensitive latch when both said assignment condition AL(Q) and said assignment condition AD(Q) are non-constant;
wherein said assignment condition AD(Q) is a signal on a data input line of said flow through latch;
said assignment condition AL(Q) is a signal on a latch gate line of said flow through latch; and
an output signal of said flow through latch is said logic signal Q.
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