earlier found not to have been met in the Flook case. Pre-1994 period After this point, more patents on software began to be granted, albeit with conflicting and confusing results. Patenting grew at a rate of 21% per year for high tech companies during this period. This was due in part to judicial decisions during this period that limited the scope of software copyright protection. After its creation in 1982, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) charted a course that tried to follow the Diehr precedent. Patents were allowed only if the claim included some sort of apparatus, even rather nominal apparatus at times, such as an analog-to-digital converter front end, or in one case a scratch-pad memory for storing intermediate data. A representative decision from this period is In re Schrader, in which the CAFC set forth probably its best and most detailed formulation of the rule it was attempting to follow. Alappat case Dissatisfaction with the perceived artificiality of this rule erupted, however, in rulings beginning with the en banc 1994 decision in In re Alappat, in which the CAFC majority held that a novel algorithm combined with a trivial physical step constitutes a novel physical device. Therefore, a computing device on which is loaded a mathematical algorithm is a "new machine," which is patent-eligible. This ruling was immediately preceded by In re Lowry, which held that a data structure representing information on a computer's hard drive or memory is similarly to be treated as a patent-eligible physical device, and in which the Solicitor General's Office declined the PTO's request to seek certiorari. As a result, the PTO did not even request that the Solicitor General's Office seek certiorari in the Alappat case. State Street Bank case and aftermath Finally, in State Street Bank v. Signature Financial Group, the CAFC ruled that a numerical calculation that produces a "useful, concrete and tangible result", such as a price, is patent-eligible. The USPTO's reaction to this change was, for the time being at least, to "throw in the towel." The Clinton administration appointed Bruce Lehman as Commissioner of the USPTO in 1994. Unlike his predecessors, Lehman was not a patent lawyer but the chief lobbyist for the Software Publishing Industry. In 1995, the USPTO established some broad guidelines for examining and issuing software patents. The USPTO interpreted the decisions of the Federal Circuit as requiring the USPTO