Gregory John Wenkman, appearing pro se, appealed a Patent Trial and Appeal Board decision affirming the rejection of all pending claims, 1 to 20, of U.S. Patent Application No. 18/424,833 (Op. 2). The examiner rejected the claims as patent ineligible under 35 U.S.C. 101. The Board affirmed, adopted the examiner's findings, and added a second ground for rejecting all claims, lack of written description under 35 U.S.C. 112(a). It later denied rehearing (Op. 2-3).
The claims
The Board treated claim 1 as representative, and the court did not disturb that choice (Op. 4). Claim 1 recites "[a] computer-implemented business method for bartering groceries and other goods for silver and gold." In the claimed method, a business uses a computer-implemented program to determine a barter value for a customer's silver or gold, assigns the bartered value to a card, token, or mobile device on the business's closed-loop network, and debits that value when the customer later selects goods (Op. 4-7). The specification says the patentable subject matter is not the devices but "the computer-implemented process" produced by "a special computer program." The court noted that there is no further description of that program (Op. 2).
What the court held
A panel of Chief Judge Moore and Circuit Judges Dyk and Prost, writing per curiam in In re Wenkman, No. 2026-1424 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 28, 2026) (nonprecedential), agreed with the Board that the claim "is directed to the abstract idea of organizing human activity in the context of a fundamental economic practice (bartering)" (Op. 7). At Alice step two, the court said the claim elements "invoke the use of a generic computer and electronically-activated card (or mobile device or tablet) to perform basic computer functions," which is "insufficient to provide the requisite inventive concept" (Op. 8-9).
Because it affirmed on section 101, the court did not reach the written description ruling. It affirmed, with no costs (Op. 10).