The section 101 analysis in In re Comiskey is, rightly, receiving lots of attention.  (Here, for example, is Patently O’s entry on the case (as well as on In re Nuijten).

At least as interesting to me, however, is the panel’s coining a new rule of thumb for nonobviousness analysis.  One might call it the presumptive obviousness of electronification.  To wit:

Here, claims 17 and 46 at most merely add a modern general purpose computer to an otherwise unpatentable mental process and claims 15, 30, 44, and 48 merely add modern communication devices.  The routine addition of modern electronics to an otherwise unpatentable invention typcially creates a prima facie case of obviousness.

Slip op. at 24.  The footnote the court appends at the end of the second sentence just quoted, note 16, states as follows:

See Leapfrog Enters., Inc. v. Fisher-Price, Inc., 485 F.3d 1157, 1161 (Fed. Cir. 2007) (”Accommodating a prior art … device … to modern electronics would have been reasonably obvious to one of ordinary skill in [the art]” because “[a]pplying modern electronics to older … devices has been commonplace in recent years.”); see also KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 127 S. Ct. 1727, 1743-44 (2007) (addition of a well-known electronic sensor to a well-known mechanical adjustable pedal would have been obvious); Dann v. Johnson, 425 U.S. 220, 230 (1976) (finding it obvious to combine the modern computer described in the patent with “existing machine systems in the banking industry”).

Slip op. at 24 n.16.

Perhaps most intriguing is that this rule of thumb appears to be art, and skill-level (?), invariant.  Comiskey is about arbitration, Leap Frog about games, KSR about adjustable gas pedals, and Dann about banking.