Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/09pdf/08-964.pdf
Page Number: 42.0

22 

BILSKI v. KAPPOS 

STEVENS, J., concurring in judgment 

law,” Chakrabarty, 447 U. S., at 316.  It appears, however,
that  regardless  of  how  one  construes  the  term  “useful
arts,” business methods are not included. 

Noah  Webster’s  first  American  dictionary26  defined  the 
term “art”  as the “disposition or modification of  things  by
human skill, to answer the purpose intended,” and differ-
entiated  between  “useful  or  mechanic”  arts,  on  the  one 
hand,  and  “liberal  or  polite”  arts,  on  the  other.    1  An 
American  Dictionary  of  the  English  Language  (1828)
(facsimile  edition)  (emphasis  added).    Although  other 
dictionaries  defined  the  word  “art”  more  broadly,27  Web-
ster’s  definition  likely  conveyed  a  message  similar  to  the 
meaning of the word “manufactures” in the earlier English 
statute.  And  we  know  that  the  term  “useful  arts”  was 
used  in  the  founding  era  to  refer  to  manufacturing  and 
similar  applied  trades.28    See  Coulter,  The  Field  of  the 

—————— 

26 Some  scholars  suggest  that  Webster’s  “close  proximity  to  the  Con-
stitutional  Convention  coupled  with  his  familiarity  with  the  delegates 
makes it likely that he played some indirect role in the development” of
the  Constitution’s  Intellectual  Property  Clause—a  Clause  that  estab-
lished  not  only  the  power  to  create  patents  but  also  copyrights,  a 
subject in which Webster had great interest.  Donner, Copyright Clause
of  the  U. S.  Constitution:  Why  Did  the  Framers  Include  It  With
Unanimous  Approval?    36  Am.  J.  Legal.  Hist.  361,  372  (1992).    But 
there is no direct evidence of this fact.  See Walterscheid, Background 
and Origin 40–41. 

27 See,  e.g.,  1  S.  Johnson,  Dictionary  of  the  English  Language  (1773)
(reprint  1978)  (listing  as  definitions  of  an  “art”:“[t]he  power  of  doing
something  not  taught  by  nature  and  instinct,”  “[a]  science;  as,  the 
liberal arts,” “[a] trade,” “[a]rtfulness; skill; dexterity,” “[c]unning,” and 
“[s]peculation”).    One  might  question  the  breadth  of  these  definitions.
This  same  dictionary  offered  as  an  example  of  “doing  something  not 
taught by nature and instinct,” the art of “dance”; and as an example of 
a “trade,” the art of “making sugar.”  Ibid. 

28 For examples of this usage, see Book of Trades or Library of Useful
Arts (1807) (describing in a three-volume work 68 trades, each of which
is  the  means  of  creating  a  product,  such  as  feather  worker  or  cork
cutter); 1 J. Bigelow, The Useful Arts Considered in Connexion with the 
Applications  of  Science  (1840)  (surveying  a  history  of  what  we  would