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Page Number: 54

34 

BILSKI v. KAPPOS 

STEVENS, J., concurring in judgment 

must  proceed  cautiously  when  we  are  asked  to  extend
patent rights” into an area that the Patent Act likely was 
not “enacted to protect,” Flook, 437 U. S., at 596, 593, lest 
we create a legal regime that Congress never would have 
endorsed,  and  that  can  be  repaired  only  by  disturbing
settled property rights. 

V 
Despite  the  strong  historical  evidence  that  a  method  of 
doing business does not constitute a “process” under §101,
petitioners  nonetheless  argue—and  the  Court  suggests  in 
dicta,  ante,  at  10–11—that  a  subsequent  law,  the  First 
Inventor  Defense  Act  of  1999,  “must  be  read  together” 
with §101 to make business methods patentable.  Brief for 
Petitioners 29.  This argument utilizes a flawed method of
statutory interpretation and ignores the motivation for the 
1999 Act. 

In  1999,  following  a  Federal  Circuit  decision  that  inti-
mated  business  methods  could  be  patented,  see  State 
Street,  149  F. 3d  1368,  Congress  moved  quickly  to  limit
the potential fallout.  Congress passed the 1999 Act, codi-
fied  at  35  U. S. C.  §273,  which  provides  a  limited  defense 
to  claims  of  patent  infringement,  see  §273(b),  regarding 
certain  “method[s]  of  doing  or  conducting  business,” 
§273(a)(3).

It is apparent, both from the content and history of the
Act,  that  Congress  did  not  in  any  way  ratify  State  Street 
(or,  as  petitioners  contend,  the  broadest  possible  reading 
of  State  Street).  The  Act  merely  limited  one  potential 
effect of that decision: that businesses might suddenly find 
themselves  liable  for  innocently  using  methods  they  as-
sumed could not be patented.  The Act did not purport to
amend  the  limitations  in  §101  on  eligible  subject  matter.
Indeed, Congress placed the statute in Part III of Title 35,
which  addresses  “Patents  and  Protection  of  Patent 
Rights,”  rather  than  in  Part  II,  which  contains  §101  and