Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/09pdf/08-964.pdf
Page Number: 22.0

2 

BILSKI v. KAPPOS 

STEVENS, J., concurring in judgment 

patentable.  In  the  late  1990’s,  the  Federal  Circuit  and 
others  called  this  proposition  into  question.    Congress
quickly  responded  to  a  Federal  Circuit  decision  with  a
stopgap measure designed to limit a potentially significant 
new  problem  for  the  business  community.    It  passed  the
First  Inventors  Defense  Act  of  1999  (1999  Act),  113  Stat.
1501A–555 (codified at 35 U. S. C. §273), which provides a 
limited  defense  to  claims  of  patent  infringement,  see
§273(b),  for  “method[s]  of  doing  or  conducting  business,” 
§273(a)(3).  Following several more years of confusion, the
Federal  Circuit  changed  course,  overruling  recent  deci-
sions  and  holding  that  a  series  of  steps  may  constitute  a
patentable process only if it is tied to a machine or trans-
forms an article into a different state or thing.  This “ma-
chine-or-transformation test” excluded general methods of 
doing  business  as  well  as,  potentially,  a  variety  of  other 
subjects that could be called processes. 

The  Court  correctly  holds  that  the  machine-or-
transformation test is not the sole test for what constitutes 
a patentable process; rather, it is a critical clue.1  But the 
Court  is  quite  wrong,  in  my  view,  to  suggest  that  any
series of steps that is not itself an abstract idea or law of 
nature  may  constitute  a  “process”  within  the  meaning  of
§101.  The  language  in  the  Court’s  opinion  to  this  effect
can  only  cause  mischief.    The  wiser  course  would  have 
been  to  hold  that  petitioners’  method  is  not  a  “process” 
because it describes only a general method of engaging in 
business  transactions—and  business  methods  are  not 
patentable.  More  precisely,  although  a  process  is  not 
patent-ineligible simply because it is useful for conducting
business, a claim that merely describes a method of doing 
—————— 

1 Even if the machine-or-transformation test may not define the scope 
of  a  patentable  process,  it  would  be  a  grave  mistake  to  assume  that
anything  with  a  “ ‘useful,  concrete  and  tangible  result,’ ”  State  Street 
Bank & Trust v. Signature Financial Group, Inc., 149 F. 3d 1368, 1373 
(CA Fed. 1998), may be patented.