[Cryptography] Generating random values in a particular range

[Arnold Reinhold]

On Tue, 16 Aug 2016 21:38 Bill Stewart suggested:

... In general, there ought to be a standard
patent-examiner practice to immediately reject anything like
	1) Something in Knuth
	2) The method of Step 1, USING A COMPUTER!
	3) The methods of Steps 1 or 2, ON THE INTERWEBZ!
	4) ....
	5) PROFIT! (Business method using Steps 1, 2, 3, or 4.)

In a series of cases, most recently Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank (2014), the U.S Supreme Court has said pretty much exactly that, and I’m told that the U.S. Patent Office will now reject such patent applications. 

'Simply appending conventional steps, specified at a high level of generality,” to a method already “well known in the art” is not “enough” to supply the “ ‘inventive concept’ ” needed to make this transformation. Mayo, supra. The introduction of a computer into the claims does not alter the analysis. Neither stating an abstract idea “while adding the words ‘apply it,’ ” Mayo, supra, , nor limiting the use of an abstract idea “ ‘to a particular technological environment,’ ” Bilski, supra, at 610–611, is enough for patent eligibility. Stating an abstract idea while adding the words “apply it with a computer” simply combines those two steps, with the same deficient result. Wholly generic computer implementation is not generally the sort of “additional featur[e]” that provides any “practical assurance that the process is more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the [abstract idea] itself.” Mayo, supra, Pp. 11–14.'  — Alice Corp,Syllabus

Challenging existing patents can still be expensive. Any serious patent litigation is costly and the lawyers defending such a patent will usually attempt show there was an additional “get up and walk around the desk” step that supplies an "inventive concept” needed for patent eligibility. 
However in this thread's Blackberry patent case, I think an obviousness argument is more likely to prevail.  

Arnold Reinhold