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16 

BILSKI v. KAPPOS 

STEVENS, J., concurring in judgment 

American  Patent  Law  and  Administration,  1789–1836, 
p. 109  (1998)  (hereinafter  Walterscheid,  To  Promote  the 
Progress).7   The  governing  English  law,  the  Statute  of 
Monopolies,  responded  to  abuses  whereby  the  Crown
would  issue  letters  patent,  “granting  monopolies  to  court 
favorites  in  goods  or  businesses  which  had  long  before 
been enjoyed by the public.”  Graham, 383 U. S., at 5.  The 
statute generally prohibited the Crown from granting such 
exclusive rights, 21 Jam. 1, c. 3, §1 (1623), in 4 Statutes of 
the Realm 1213 (reprint 1963), but it contained exceptions
that, inter alia, permitted grants of exclusive rights to the
“working  or  making  of  any  manner  of  new  Manufacture.”
§6.

Pursuant  to  that  provision,  patents  issued  for  the
“mode, method, or way of manufacturing,” F. Campin, Law 
of  Patents  for  Inventions  11  (1869)  (emphasis  deleted), 
and  English  courts  construed  the  phrase  “working  or 
making  of  any  manner  of  new  manufactures”  to  encom-
pass manufacturing processes, see, e.g., Boulton v. Bull, 2 
H.  Bl.  463,  471,  492,  126  Eng.  Rep.  651,  655,  666  (C.  P.
1795)  (holding  that  the  term  “manufacture”  “applied  not 
only  to  things  made,  but  to  the  practice  of  making,  to
principles  carried  into  practice  in  a  new  manner,  to  new 
results of principles carried into practice”).  Thus, English 
courts  upheld  James  Watt’s  famous  patent  on  a  method 
for reducing the consumption of fuel in steam engines,8 as 
—————— 

7 See  Pennock  v.  Dialogue,  2  Pet.  1,  18  (1829)  (“[M]any  of  the  provi-
sions  of  our  patent  act  are  derived  from  the  principles  and  practice, 
which have prevailed in the construction of that of England”); Proceed-
ings in Congress During the Years 1789 and 1790 Relating to the First
Patent  and  Copyright  Laws,  22  J.  Pat.  Off.  Soc.  352,  363  (1940)  (ex-
plaining that the 1790 Patent Act was “framed according to the Course 
of  Practice  in  the  English  Patent  Office”);  see  also  Walterscheid,  The
Early  Evolution  of  the  United  States  Patent  Law:  Antecedents,  76  J.
Pat.  &  Trademark  Off.  Soc.  697,  698  (1994)  (describing  the  role  of  the
English backdrop). 

8 See Hornblower v. Boulton, 8 T. R. 95  (K.  B. 1799).