方法請求項應與物挷在一起

方法請求項中，於重要的步驟中應確實地記載其他法定類別（物）。對於計算方法及IC類的專利，應特別重視這個備忘錄「May 15, 2008 memorandum issued by Deputy Commissioner for Patent Examining Policy」。

The claims are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 as not falling within one of the four statutory categories of invention. While the claims recite a series of steps or acts to be performed, a statutory "process" under 35 U.S.C. 101 must (1) be tied to another statutory category (such as a particular apparatus), or (2) transform underlying subject matter (such as an article or material) to a different state or thing (Reference the May 15, 2008 memorandum issued by Deputy Commissioner for Patent Examining Policy, John J. Love, titled "Clarification of 'Processes' under 35 U.S.C. 101" - publicly available at USPTO.GOV, "memorandum to examining corp"). In order for a process to be "tied" to another statutory category, the structure of another statutory category should be positively recited in a step or steps significant to the basic inventive concept, and NOT just in association with statements of intended use or purpose, insignificant pre or post solution activity, or implicitly.

1、請留意“意見”，也許computer system不能解釋成“particular apparatus”。

4月6日更新。

". . .We leave to future cases the elaboration of the precise contours of machine implementation, as well as the answers to particular questions, such as whether or when recitation of a computer suffices to tie a process claim to a particular machine."

方法請求項要與物挷在一起的範例可以參考U.S. Patent number: 6425017

7. In a computer system, a method of asynchronously remoting method invocations of a client program to a program component via a message queue, the method comprising:

providing a reference for use by the client program to invoke methods on the program component;

responsive to a client program issuing a set of method invocations for the queued component, marshaling data for the method invocations of the set into a message;

upon release of the reference by the client program, submitting the message to the message queue associated with the program component; and

at a later time of processing the message from the message queue, unmarshaling the data for the method invocations from the message, and issuing the set of method invocations to the queued component.