Machine (patent)
In United States patent law, a machine is one of the four principal categories of things that may be patented. The other three are a process, an article of manufacture, and a composition of matter. In United States patent law, that same terminology has been in use since the first patent act in 1790.
In In re Nuitjen, 500 F.3d 1346, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said:
To this it might be added that the parts must interact with one another, for otherwise they might be parts of an article of manufacture. It has been considered grounds for rejecting or invalidating a machine claim as being directed to a "mere aggregation" if the parts were merely associated with one another without interacting functionally. An illustration of a mere aggregation would be the "combination" of a bathtub and a pencil sharpener. More recently, the "mere aggregation" ground of invalidity for a machine claim has been subsumed under obviousness.
Examples of machines are steam engines, sewing machines, and TV sets. Electronic circuits have usually been considered machines, although they may lack moving parts.
