Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/11pdf/10-1150.pdf
Page Number: 21.0

Cite as:  566 U. S. ____ (2012) 

17 

Opinion of the Court 

this patent the inventor could not use it, nor the pub­
lic have the benefit of it without the permission of this 
patentee.”  Id., at 113.

  Similarly,  in  Benson  the  Court  said  that  the  claims 
before  it  were  “so  abstract  and  sweeping  as  to  cover  both
known and unknown uses of the [mathematical formula].”
409 U. S., at 67, 68.  In Bilski  the Court pointed out that
to  allow  “petitioners  to  patent  risk  hedging  would  pre­
empt use of this approach in all fields.”  561 U. S., at ___ 
(slip op., at 15).  And in Flook the Court expressed concern 
that the claimed process was simply “a formula for compu­
ting an updated alarm limit,” which might “cover a broad
range of potential uses.”  437 U. S., at 586. 

These  statements  reflect  the  fact  that,  even  though
rewarding  with  patents  those  who  discover  new  laws  of 
nature and the like might well encourage their discovery, 
those  laws  and  principles,  considered  generally,  are  “the
basic  tools  of  scientific  and  technological  work.”    Benson, 
supra,  at  67.    And  so  there  is  a  danger  that  the  grant  of
patents that tie up their use will inhibit future innovation 
premised upon them, a danger that becomes acute when a 
patented process amounts to no more than an instruction
to  “apply  the  natural  law,”  or  otherwise  forecloses  more
future  invention  than  the  underlying  discovery  could
reasonably  justify.  See  generally  Lemley,  Risch,  Sichel­
man,  &  Wagner,  Life  After  Bilski,  63  Stan.  L. Rev.  1315 
(2011)  (hereinafter  Lemley)  (arguing  that  §101  reflects
this  kind  of  concern);  see  also  C.  Bohannan  &  H.
Hovenkamp,  Creation  without  Restraint:  Promoting  Lib­
erty  and  Rivalry  in  Innovation  112  (2012)  (“One  problem 
with  [process]  patents  is  that  the  more  abstractly  their 
claims  are  stated,  the  more  difficult  it  is  to  determine 
precisely  what  they  cover.  They  risk  being  applied  to  a 
wide  range  of  situations  that  were  not  anticipated  by  the 
patentee”);  W.  Landes  &  R.  Posner,  The  Economic  Struc­