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Page Number: 46

26 

BILSKI v. KAPPOS 

STEVENS, J., concurring in judgment 

should be patentable.32  Id., at 9.  He drafted the 1793 Act, 
id., at 7, and, years later, explained that in that Act “ ‘the 
whole was turned over to the judiciary, to be matured into
a  system,  under  which  every  one  might  know  when  his 
actions were safe and lawful,’ ” id., at 10 (quoting Letter to 
Issac McPherson, in VI Writings of Thomas Jefferson 181–
182  (H.  Washington  ed.  1861)).  As  the  Court  has  ex-
plained,  “Congress  agreed  with  Jefferson  . . .  that  the 
courts should develop additional conditions for patentabil-
ity.”  Graham,  383  U. S.,  at  10.    Thus  “[a]lthough  the 
Patent  Act  was  amended,  revised  or  codified  some  50 
times  between  1790  and  1950,  Congress  steered  clear”  of 
adding statutory requirements of patentability.  Ibid.  For 
nearly 160 years, Congress retained the term “useful arts,” 
see, e.g., Act of July 4, 1836, ch. 357, 5 Stat.  117, leaving 
“wide  latitude  for  judicial  construction  . . .  to  keep  pace
with industrial development,” Berman, Method Claims, 17
J. Pat. Off. Soc. 713, 714 (1935) (hereinafter Berman). 

Although  courts  occasionally  struggled  with  defining 
what was a patentable “art”  during those 160 years, they 
consistently  rejected  patents  on  methods  of  doing  busi-
ness.  The rationales for those decisions sometimes varied. 
But  there  was  an  overarching  theme,  at  least  in  dicta:
Business  methods  are  not  patentable  arts.    See,  e.g., 
United  States  Credit  Sys.  Co.  v.  American  Credit  Indem. 
Co.,  53  F.  818,  819  (CC  NY  1893)  (“method  of  insuring
against  loss  by  bad  debts”  could  not  be  patented  “as  an
art”);  Hotel  Security  Checking  Co.  v.  Lorraine  Co.,  160  F. 
467,  469  (CA2  1908)  (“A  system  of  transacting  business
disconnected  from  the  means  for  carrying  out  the  system 
is  not,  within  the  most  liberal  interpretation  of  the  term, 

—————— 

32 A  skeptic  of  patents,  Jefferson  described  this  as  “drawing  a  line
between  things  which  are  worth  to the  public  the  embarrassment  of  a 
patent, and those which are not.”  13 Writings of Thomas Jefferson 335 
(Memorial ed. 1904).