By Bryan Schwartz (October 25, 2017, 1:04 PM EDT) -- Since as long ago as the famous case of O'Reilly v. Morse,[1] the U.S. Supreme Court has disparaged the notion that a patent could be obtained on claims to a "result" or "effect" (in Morse, the printing of intelligible characters at a distance). This principle, while sometimes appearing in different guises, runs true up and through the Supreme Court's decision in Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Co. v. Walker,[2] which invalidated a claim reciting a tuning mechanism that performed the functions of a sound filter. The Federal Circuit, however, has been unwilling to honor the principle established by these cases, setting up another showdown between the Federal Circuit and Supreme Court with potentially significant implications for patentability challenges based on indefiniteness under 35 U.S.C. § 112 and patent eligibility challenges under 35 U.S.C. § 101....