From today's Patent Trial and Appeal Board decision:

"We are aware of no controlling authority that requires the Office to provide factual evidence to support a finding that a claim is directed to an abstract idea."

Ex parte Johnson, Appeal 2016-004623 (January 18, 2018).

The ex parte appeal involves IBM-owned patent application No. 13/191,583 with a pending claim 1 that itself is quite an essay at 900 words. (NYT letters to the editor should be <175 words). The PTAB affirmed the examiner's rejection of the claims as effectively claiming the abstract idea of “managing customer discounts following the receiving of a cancellation request by a customer.”

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