This is the idea that a patentshould be given to a machine or something that creates a material change, like a chemical process.

VOA: special.2010.07.16

Marjorie went to her machine and slid the material out from under the foot.

NEWYORKER: The Visitor

Boies argues that Napster technology is essentially like a VCR or photocopy machine -- a tool that may be used to pirate copyrighted material but is not inherently illegal.

CNN: The next piracy panic: Software

Even more fundamentally, the digital economy's infrastructure has advanced basic material science and classes of machine tools that have led directly to the new high-power electronics (enabling hybrids) and to big, cheap flat-panel, thin-film PVs (derived from the massive thin-film machines that make flat-panel-TVs).

FORBES: Bubble Energy?