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Page Number: 34.0

14 

BILSKI v. KAPPOS 

STEVENS, J., concurring in judgment 

So  is  the  Court,  perhaps.    What  is  particularly  incredi-
ble  about  the  Court’s  stated  method  of  interpreting  §101 
(other  than  that  the  method  itself  may  be  patent-eligible 
under  the  Court’s  theory  of  §101)  is  that  the  Court  devi-
ates  from  its  own  professed  commitment  to  “ordinary,
contemporary,  common  meaning.”   As  noted  earlier,  the 
Court  accepts  a  role  for  the  “atextual”  machine-or-
transformation  “clue.”  Ante,  at  12,  7.    The  Court  also 
accepts that we have “foreclose[d] a purely literal reading
of  §101,”  Flook,  437  U. S.,  at  589,  by  holding  that  claims
that are close to “laws of nature, natural phenomena, and 
abstract  ideas,”  Diamond  v.  Diehr,  450  U. S.  175,  185 
(1981),  do  not  count  as  “processes”  under  §101,  even  if 
they  can  be  colloquially  described  as  such.6   The  Court 
attempts  to  justify  this  latter  exception  to  §101  as  “a 
matter  of  statutory  stare  decisis.”  Ante,  at  5.  But  it  is 
strange  to  think  that  the  very  same  term  must  be  inter-
preted  literally  on  some  occasions,  and  in  light  of  its  his-
torical usage on others.

In fact, the Court’s understanding of §101 is even more 
remarkable  because  its  willingness  to  exclude  general
principles from the provision’s reach is in tension with its 
apparent willingness to include steps for conducting busi-
ness.  The  history  of  patent  law  contains  strong  norms 
against  patenting  these  two  categories  of  subject  matter.
Both  norms  were  presumably  incorporated  by  Congress 
into the Patent Act in 1952. 
—————— 

Cf.  ante,  at  12–13  (plurality  opinion).    A  great  deal  of  human  activity 
was at some time novel and nonobvious. 

6 Curiously,  the  Court  concedes  that  “these  exceptions  are  not  re-
quired  by  the  statutory  text,”  but  urges  that  “they  are  consistent  with 
the  notion  that  a  patentable  process  must  be  ‘new  and useful.’ ”  Ante, 
at 5 (emphasis added).  I do not see how these exceptions find a textual 
home in the term “new and useful.”  The exceptions may be consistent 
with  those  words,  but  they  are  sometimes  inconsistent  with  the  “ordi-
nary,  contemporary,  common  meaning,”  ante,  at  6,  10  (internal  quota-
tion marks omitted), of the words “process” and “method.”