I previously wrote about the pending RecogniCorp petition for writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court that asks for clarification of the Abstract Idea analysis. I see the basic question here as to whether Parker v. Flook is good law. The Supreme Court will likely discuss the case in their January 5 conference.
In my prior post I had included a copy of claim 1 from the asserted U.S. Patent No. 8,005,303. However, it turns out that the claim 1 was amended during a third-party-initiated ex parte reexamination and now reads as follows:
1. A method for creating a composite image, comprising:
displaying facial feature images on a first area of a first display via a first device associated with the first display, wherein the facial feature images are associated with facial feature element codes;
selecting a facial feature image from the first area of the first display via a user interface associated with the first device, wherein the first device incorporates the selected facial feature image into a composite image on a second area of the first display, wherein
the composite image is associated with a composite facial image code having at least a facial feature element code and wherein the composite facial image code is derived by performing at least one multiplication operation on a facial code using one or more code factors as input parameters to the multiplication operation; and
reproducing the composite image on a second display based on the composite facial image code.
In the reexamination, the examiner particularly found that the added limitations were not found in the prior art and sufficiently inventive to avoid an obviousness rejection.