Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/09pdf/08-964.pdf
Page Number: 27

Cite as:  561 U. S. ____ (2010) 

7 

STEVENS, J., concurring in judgment 

First,  the  Court  suggests  that  the  terms  in  the  Patent
Act must be read as lay speakers use those terms, and not
as they have traditionally been understood in the context
of patent law.  See, e.g., ante, at 6 (terms in §101 must be
viewed in light of their “ ‘ordinary, contemporary, common
meaning’ ”);  ante,  at  10  (patentable  “method”  is  any  “or-
derly  procedure  or  process,”  “regular  way  or  manner  of 
doing  anything,”  or  “set  form  of  procedure  adopted  in 
investigation  or  instruction”  (internal  quotation  marks
omitted)).  As  I  will  explain  at  more  length  in  Part  III, 
infra,  if  this  portion  of  the  Court’s  opinion  were  taken 
literally,  the  results  would  be  absurd:  Anything  that  con-
stitutes a series of steps would be patentable so long as it 
is  novel,  nonobvious,  and  described  with  specificity.    But 
the  opinion  cannot  be  taken  literally  on  this  point.    The 
Court makes this clear when it accepts that the “atextual”
machine-or-transformation test, ante, at 12, is “useful and 
important,” ante, at 8, even though it “violates” the stated 
“statutory interpretation principles,” ante, at 6; and when 
the  Court  excludes  processes  that  tend  to  pre-empt  com-
monly used ideas, see ante, at 14–15. 

Second,  in  the  process  of  addressing  the  sole  issue 
presented  to  us,  the  opinion  uses  some  language  that 
seems  inconsistent  with  our  centuries-old  reliance  on  the 
machine-or-transformation  criteria  as  clues  to  patentabil-
ity.  Most  notably,  the  opinion  for  a  plurality  suggests
that  these  criteria  may  operate  differently  when  address-
ing  technologies  of  a  recent  vintage.  See  ante,  at  8–9 
(machine-or-transformation  test  is  useful  “for  evaluating
processes  similar  to  those  in  the  Industrial  Age,”  but  is
less useful “for determining the patentability of inventions
in the Information Age”).  In moments of caution, however, 
the  opinion  for  the  Court  explains—correctly—that  the
Court is merely restoring the law to its historical state of 
rest.  See  ante,  at  8  (“This  Court’s  precedents  establish 
that  the  machine-or-transformation  test  is  a  useful  and