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Page Number: 48.0

28 

BILSKI v. KAPPOS 

STEVENS, J., concurring in judgment 

Walker on Patents §18, p.  62 (1937).34  Citing many of the 
cases listed above, the treatise concluded that a “method of 
transacting business” is not an “ ‘art.’ ”  Id., §22, at 69; see
also L. Amdur, Patent Law and Practice §39, p.  53 (1935)
(listing  “Methods  of  doing  business”  as  an  “Unpatentable 
[A]r[t]”);  Berman  718  (“[C]ases  have  been  fairly  unani-
mous  in  denying  patentability  to  such  methods”);  Tew,
Method of Doing Business, 16 J. Pat. Off. Soc. 607 (1934) 
(“It  is  probably  settled  by  long  practice  and  many  prece-
dents that ‘methods of doing business,’ as these words are
generally understood, are unpatentable”).  Indeed, “[u]ntil
recently”  it  was  still  “considered  well  established  that
[business] methods were non-statutory.”  1 R. Moy, Walker 
on Patents §5:28, p. 5–104 (4th ed. 2009).35 

Modern American Patent Law 

By  the  mid-1900’s,  many  courts  were  construing  the
term  “art”  by  using  words  such  as  “method,  process,  sys-
tem, or like terms.”  Berman 713; see Expanded Metal Co. 
v. Bradford, 214 U. S. 366, 382 (1909) (“The word ‘process’ 
has  been  brought  into  the  decisions  because  it  is  suppos-
edly  an  equivalent  form  of  expression  or  included  in  the 

—————— 

34 See also 1  A. Deller, Walker on Patents §26, p. 152 (2d ed. 1964) (A 
“ ‘system’ or method of transacting business is not [a process], nor does 
it come within any other designation of patentable subject matter”). 

35 Although a few patents issued before 1952 that related to methods 
of  doing  business,  see  United  States  Patent  and  Trademark  Office, 
Automated Financial or Management Data Processing Methods, online 
at  http://www.uspto.gov/web/menu/busmethp/index.html  (all  Internet 
materials  as  visited  June  26,  2010,  and  available  in  Clerk  of  Court’s 
case  file),  these  patents  were  rare,  often  issued  through  self-
registration  rather  than  any  formalized  patent  examination,  generally
were not upheld by courts, and arguably are distinguishable from pure 
patents  on  business  methods  insofar  as  they  often  involved  the  manu-
facture  of  new  objects.  See  In re  Bilski,  545  F. 3d  943,  974,  and  n. 18 
(CA  Fed.  2008)  (case  below)  (Dyk,  J.,  concurring);  Pollack  74–75; 
Walterscheid, To Promote the Progress 243.