Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/09pdf/08-964.pdf
Page Number: 2.0

2 

BILSKI v. KAPPOS 

545 F. 3d 943, affirmed. 

Syllabus 

JUSTICE  KENNEDY  delivered  the  opinion  of  the  Court,  except  as  to
Parts II–B–2 and II–C–2, concluding that petitioners’ claimed inven-
tion is not patent eligible.  Pp. 4–8, 10–11, 12–16. 

(a) Section  101  specifies  four  independent  categories  of  inventions
or  discoveries  that  are  patent  eligible:  “process[es],”  “machin[es],”
“manufactur[es],”  and  “composition[s]  of  matter.”    “In  choosing  such
expansive  terms,  . . .  Congress  plainly  contemplated  that  the  patent
laws would be given wide scope,” Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 U. S. 
303, 308, in order to ensure that “ ‘ingenuity should receive a liberal 
encouragement,’ ”  id.,  at  308–309.    This  Court’s  precedents  provide
three  specific  exceptions  to  §101’s  broad  principles:  “laws  of  nature, 
physical phenomena, and abstract ideas.”  Id., at 309.  While not re-
quired by the statutory text, these exceptions are consistent with the 
notion that a  patentable process must  be “new and useful.”  And, in 
any case, the exceptions have defined the statute’s reach as a matter
of  statutory  stare  decisis  going  back  150  years.    See  Le  Roy  v. 
Tatham,  14  How.  156,  174.    The  §101  eligibility  inquiry  is  only  a 
threshold  test.    Even  if  a  claimed  invention  qualifies  in  one  of  the
four categories, it must also satisfy “the conditions and requirements 
of this title,” §101(a), including novelty, see §102, nonobviousness, see
§103, and a full and particular description, see §112.  The invention 
at issue is claimed to be a “process,” which §100(b) defines as a “proc-
ess,  art  or  method,  and  includes a  new  use  of  a  known  process,  ma-
chine, manufacture, composition of matter, or material.”  Pp. 4–5.

(b) The machine-or-transformation test is not the sole test for pat-
ent eligibility  under §101.   The Court’s precedents establish  that  al-
though that test may be a useful and important clue or investigative
tool, it is not the sole test for deciding whether an invention is a pat-
ent-eligible  “process”  under  §101.    In  holding  to  the  contrary,  the 
Federal  Circuit  violated  two  principles  of  statutory  interpretation:
Courts “ ‘should not read into the patent laws limitations and condi-
tions  which  the  legislature  has  not  expressed,’ ”  Diamond  v.  Diehr, 
450 U. S. 175, 182, and, “[u]nless otherwise defined, ‘words will be in-
terpreted  as  taking  their  ordinary,  contemporary,  common  mean-
ing,’ ”  ibid.  The  Court  is  unaware  of  any  ordinary,  contemporary, 
common  meaning  of  “process”  that  would  require  it  to  be  tied  to  a
machine or the transformation of an article.  Respondent Patent Di-
rector  urges  the  Court  to  read  §101’s  other  three  patentable  catego-
ries as confining “process” to a machine or transformation.  However, 
the  doctrine  of  noscitur  a  sociis  is  inapplicable  here,  for  §100(b)  al-
ready  explicitly  defines  “process,”  see  Burgess  v.  United  States,  553 
U. S.  124,  130,  and  nothing  about  the  section’s  inclusion  of  those 
other categories suggests that a “process” must be tied to one of them.