Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/16pdf/15-777_7lho.pdf
Page Number: 9.0

Cite as:  580 U. S. ____ (2016) 

7 

Opinion of the Court 

Office  and  the  courts  have  understood  §171  to  permit  a
design patent for a design extending to only a component
of  a  multicomponent  product.    See,  e.g.,  Ex  parte  Adams, 
84 Off. Gaz. Pat. Office 311 (1898) (“The several articles of 
manufacture  of  peculiar  shape  which  when  combined 
produce a machine or structure having movable parts may
each separately be patented as a design . . . ”); Application 
of  Zahn,  617  F. 2d  261,  268  (CCPA  1980)  (“Section  171
authorizes  patents  on  ornamental  designs  for  articles  of
manufacture.  While the design must be embodied in some 
articles, the statute is  not limited to designs for complete
articles,  or  ‘discrete’  articles,  and  certainly  not  to  articles
separately sold . . . ”).

This  reading  is  also  consistent  with  35  U. S. C.  §101, 
which makes “any new and useful . . . manufacture . . . or 
any  new  and  useful  improvement  thereof ”  eligible  for 
utility  patent  protection.  Cf.  8  D.  Chisum,  Patents 
§23.03[2], pp. 23–12 to 23–13 (2014) (noting that “article of 
manufacture” in §171 includes “what would be considered 
a  ‘manufacture’  within  the  meaning  of  Section  101”).
“[T]his Court has read the term ‘manufacture’ in §101 . . . 
to  mean  ‘the  production  of  articles  for  use  from  raw  or
prepared  materials  by  giving  to  these  materials  new 
forms,  qualities,  properties,  or  combinations,  whether  by
hand-labor  or  by  machinery.’ ”    Diamond  v.  Chakrabarty, 
447  U. S.  303,  308  (1980)  (quoting  American  Fruit  Grow-
ers, Inc. v. Brogdex Co., 283 U. S. 1, 11 (1931)).  The broad 
term  includes  “the  parts  of  a  machine  considered  sepa-
rately from the machine itself.”  1 W. Robinson, The Law 
of Patents for Useful Inventions §183, p. 270 (1890). 

B 
The  Federal  Circuit’s  narrower  reading  of  “article  of
manufacture”  cannot  be  squared  with  the  text  of  §289. 
The Federal Circuit found that components of the infring-
ing smartphones could not be the relevant article of manu-