Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/09pdf/08-964.pdf
Page Number: 41.0

Cite as:  561 U. S. ____ (2010) 

21 

STEVENS, J., concurring in judgment 

Clause  included  the  authority  to  patent  methods  of  doing
business, it might not have passed so quietly. 

In 1790, Congress passed the first Patent Act, an “Act to
promote  the  progress  of  useful  Arts”  that  authorized  pat-
ents  for  persons  who  had  “invented  or  discovered  any 
useful  art,  manufacture,  engine,  machine,  or  device,  or 
any  improvement  therein  not  before  known  or  used,”  if
“the  invention  or  discovery  [was]  sufficiently  useful  and
important.”  1 Stat. 109–110.  Three years later, Congress 
passed  the  Patent  Act  of  1793  and  slightly  modified  the 
language  to  cover  “any  new  and  useful  art,  machine, 
manufacture  or  composition  of  matter,  or  any  new  and 
useful  improvement  on  any  art,  machine,  manufacture  or 
composition of matter.”  1 Stat. 319. 

The  object  of  the  constitutional  patent  power  and  the
statutory  authorization  for  process  patents  in  the  early 
patent  Acts  was  the  term  “useful  art.”    It  is  not  evident 
from  the  face  of  the  statutes  or  the  Constitution  whether 
the  objects  of  the  patent  system  were  “arts”  that  are  also
useful, or rather a more specific category, the class of arts
known  as  “useful  arts.”  Cf.  Graham,  383  U. S.,  at  12 
(describing the “ ‘new and useful’ tests which have always
existed  in  the  statutory  scheme”  and  apply  to  all  catego-
ries  of  subject  matter).    However,  we  have  generally  as-
sumed that “useful art,” at least as it is used in the Patent 
Act, is itself a term of art.  See Burden, 15 How., at 267– 
268. 

The word “art” and the phrase “useful arts” are subject 
to  many  meanings.  There  is  room  on  the  margins  to  de-
bate  exactly  what  qualifies  as  either.    There  is  room, 
moreover, to debate at what level of generality we should 
understand  these  broad  and  historical  terms,  given  that 
“[a] rule that unanticipated inventions are without protec-
tion  would  conflict  with  the  core  concept  of  the  patent 

—————— 

D. D., 6 id., at 303, 303.