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24 

BILSKI v. KAPPOS 

STEVENS, J., concurring in judgment 

Thus,  fields  such  as  business  and  finance  were  not 
generally considered part of the “useful arts” in the found-
ing Era.  See, e.g., The Federalist No. 8, p. 69 (C. Rossiter 
ed.  1961)  (A.  Hamilton)  (distinguishing  between  “the  arts
of  industry,  and  the  science  of  finance”);  30  The  Writings
of  George  Washington  1745–1799,  p.  186    (J.  Fitzpatrick
ed. 1939) (writing in a letter that “our commerce has been
considerably  curtailed,”  but  “the  useful  arts  have  been
almost  imperceptible  pushed  to  a  considerable  degree  of 
perfection”).    Indeed,  the  same  delegate  to  the  Constitu-
tional Convention who gave an address in which he listed 
triumphs  in  the  useful  arts  distinguished  between  those
arts and the conduct of business.  He explained that inves-
tors  were  now  attracted  to  the  “manufactures  and  the 
useful  arts,”  much  as  they  had  long  invested  in  “com-
merce,  navigation,  stocks,  banks,  and  insurance  compa-
nies.”  T. Coxe, A Statement of the Arts and Manufactures 
of the United States of America for the Year 1810, (1814),
in 2 American State Papers, Finance 666, 688 (1832). 

Some scholars have remarked, as did Thomas Jefferson, 
that  early  patent  statutes  neither  included  nor  reflected
any  serious  debate  about  the  precise  scope  of  patentable 
—————— 

try, physics, and the like; to make a distinctive contribution to scientific
knowledge”); In re Waldbaum, 457 F. 2d 997, 1003 (CCPA 1972) (Rich,
J., concurring) (“ ‘The phrase “technological arts,” as we have used it, is
synonymous  with  the  phrase  “useful  arts”  as  it  appears  in  Article  I,
Section  8  of  the  Constitution’ ”);  Paulik  v.  Rizkalla,  760  F. 2d  1270, 
1276 (CA Fed. 1985) (explaining that “useful arts” is “the process today
called  technological  innovation”);  Thomas,  The  Post-Industrial  Patent 
System,  10  Fordham  Intell.  Prop.  Media  &  Ent.  L. J.  3,  32–55  (1999)
(cataloguing  early  understandings  of  technological  arts).    This  view 
may be supported, for example, by an 1814 grant to Harvard University
to  create  a  “Professorship  on  the  Application  of  Science  to  the  Useful 
Arts,”  something  that  today  might  be  akin  to  applied  science  or  engi-
neering.  See  M.  James,  Engineering  an  Environment  for  Change: 
Bigelow,  Peirce,  and  Early  Nineteenth-Century  Practical  Education  at 
Harvard,  in  Science  at  Harvard  University:  Historical  Perspectives  59
(C. Elliott & M. Rossiter eds. 1992).