Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/12pdf/12-398_1b7d.pdf
Page Number: 14.0

Cite as:  569 U. S. ____ (2013) 

11 

Opinion of the Court 

35 U. S. C. §101. 

We  have  “long  held  that  this  provision  contains  an  im-
portant  implicit  exception[:]  Laws  of  nature,  natural  phe-
nomena,  and  abstract  ideas  are  not  patentable.”    Mayo, 
566 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 1) (internal quotation marks 
and brackets omitted).  Rather, “ ‘they are the basic tools of
scientific  and  technological  work’ ”  that  lie  beyond  the 
domain of patent protection.  Id., at ___ (slip op., at 2).  As 
the  Court  has  explained,  without  this  exception,  there
would  be  considerable  danger  that  the  grant  of  patents 
would  “tie  up”  the  use  of  such  tools  and  thereby  “inhibit
future  innovation  premised  upon  them.”    Id.,  at  ___  (slip 
op.,  at  17).    This  would  be  at  odds  with  the  very  point 
of  patents,  which  exist  to  promote  creation.  Diamond  v. 
Chakrabarty,  447  U. S.  303,  309  (1980)  (Products  of  na-
ture  are  not  created,  and  “ ‘manifestations  . . .  of  nature 
[are] free to all men and reserved exclusively to none’ ”). 

The  rule  against  patents  on  naturally  occurring  things 
is not without limits, however, for “all inventions at some 
level  embody,  use,  reflect,  rest  upon,  or  apply  laws  of 
nature,  natural  phenomena,  or  abstract  ideas,”  and  “too 
broad  an  interpretation  of  this  exclusionary  principle 
could eviscerate patent law.”  566 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 
2).  As we have recognized before, patent protection strikes 
a  delicate  balance  between  creating  “incentives  that  lead 
to creation, invention, and discovery” and “imped[ing] the 
flow  of  information  that  might  permit,  indeed  spur,  in- 
vention.”  Id., at ___ (slip op., at 23).  We must apply this
well-established  standard  to  determine  whether  Myr-
iad’s  patents  claim  any  “new  and  useful  . . .  composition
of  matter,”  §101,  or  instead  claim  naturally  occurring 
phenomena. 

B 
It is undisputed that Myriad did not create or alter any 
of  the  genetic  information  encoded  in  the  BRCA1  and