Since a federal appeals court affirmed the USPTO in In re Bilski, lower courts around the country have adopted the same logic, saying patents must involve a machine or a process that transforms some type of material substance.

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Beach nourishment: artificial process of replenishing a beach with material from another source that lies either inland or is dredged offshore.

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The raw material, in the matching process, is a mass of stated preference: your desire or intolerance for certain traits and characteristics.

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He admits that it is not simple to pull the sugars out of non-food material like pulp or wood waste, but says that even factoring in the extraction process, the final cost should be lower than using corn starch or sugar cane, both of which are much higher-priced commodities.

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