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18 

BILSKI v. KAPPOS 

STEVENS, J., concurring in judgment 

the  “prevail[ing]”  “principles  and  practice”  in  England  on
which  our  patent  law  was  based,  Pennock  v.  Dialogue,  2 
Pet. 1, 18 (1829).  Such patents were exceedingly rare, and 
some  of  them  probably  were  viewed  not  as  inventions  or 
discoveries  but  rather  as  special  state  privileges13  that 
until the mid-1800’s were recorded alongside inventions in
the  patent  records,  see  MacLeod  1–2  (explaining  that 
various types of patents were listed together).  It appears
that the only English patent of the time that can fairly be
described  as  a  business  method  patent  was  one  issued  in 
1778 on a “Plan for assurances on lives of persons from 10 
to  80  years  of  Age.”  Woodcroft  324.14    And  “[t]here  is  no 
indication” that this patent “was ever enforced or its valid-
ity  tested,”  545  F. 3d,  at  974  (Dyk,  J.,  concurring);  the 
patent  may  thus  have  represented  little  more  than  the 
whim—or error—of a single patent clerk.15 

In  any  event,  these  patents  (or  patent)  were  probably 
not known to the Framers of early patent law.  In an era 
before  computerized  databases,  organized  case  law,  and 
treatises,16  the  American  drafters  probably  would  have 

—————— 

13 See,  e.g.,  C.  Ewen,  Lotteries  and  Sweepstakes  70–71  (1932)  (de-
scribing the “letters patent” to form a colony in Virginia and to operate 
lotteries to fund that colony). 

14 See  also  Renn,  John  Knox’s  Plan  for  Insuring  Lives:  A  Patent  of 
Invention  in  1778,  101  J.  Inst.  Actuaries  285,  286  (1974)  (hereinafter
Renn) (describing the patent). 

15 “The English patent system” at that time “was one of simple regis-
tration.  Extensive scrutiny was not expected of the law officers admin-
istering it.”  MacLeod 41.  Thus, as one scholar suggested of the patent 
on life insurance, “perhaps the Law Officer was in a very good humour 
that day, or perhaps he had forgotten the wording of the statute; most
likely  he  was  concerned  only  with  the  promised  ‘very  considerable 
Consumption of [Revenue] Stamps’ which [the patent holder] declared, 
would ‘contribute to the increase of the Public Revenues.’ ”  Renn 285. 

16 See  Markman  v.  Westview  Instruments,  Inc.,  517  U. S.  370,  381 
(1996) (“[T]he state of patent law in the common-law courts before 1800
led one historian to observe that ‘the reported cases are destitute of any
decision  of  importance’ ”  (quoting  Hulme,  On  the  Consideration  of  the