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Cite as:  584 U. S. ____ (2018) 

11 

Opinion of the Court 

579 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 3).  The Patent Act provides 
that, “[s]ubject to the provisions of this title, patents shall 
have  the  attributes  of  personal  property.”    35  U. S. C. 
§261.    This  provision  qualifies  any  property  rights  that  a 
patent  owner  has  in  an  issued  patent,  subjecting  them  to 
the express provisions of the Patent Act.  See eBay Inc. v. 
MercExchange, L. L. C., 547 U. S. 388, 392 (2006).  Those 
provisions include inter partes review.  See §§311–319. 
  Nor do the precedents that Oil States cites foreclose the 
kind of post-issuance administrative review that Congress 
has  authorized  here.    To  be  sure,  two  of  the  cases  make 
broad declarations that “[t]he only authority competent to 
set  a  patent  aside,  or  to  annul  it,  or  to  correct  it  for  any 
reason  whatever,  is  vested  in  the  courts  of  the  United 
States,  and  not  in  the  department  which  issued  the  pat- 
ent.”    McCormick  Harvesting  Machine  Co.,  supra,  at  609; 
accord,  American  Bell  Telephone  Co.,  128  U. S.,  at  364.  
But  those  cases  were  decided  under  the  Patent  Act  of 
1870.  See id., at 371; McCormick Harvesting Machine Co., 
supra,  at  611.    That  version  of  the  Patent  Act  did  not 
include  any  provision  for  post-issuance  administrative 
review.    Those  precedents,  then,  are  best  read  as  a  de-
scription of the statutory scheme that existed at that time.  
They do not resolve Congress’ authority under the Consti-
tution to establish a different scheme.3 

—————— 

3 The dissent points to McCormick’s statement that the Patent Office 
Commissioner could not invalidate the patent at issue because it would 
“ ‘deprive the applicant of his property without due process of law, and 
would be in fact an invasion of the judicial branch.’ ”  Post, at 10 (quot-
ing McCormick Harvesting Machine Co. v. Aultman, 169 U. S. 606, 612 
(1898)).  But that statement followed naturally from the Court’s deter-
mination  that,  under  the  Patent  Act  of  1870,  the  Commissioner  “was 
functus  officio”  and  “had  no  power  to  revoke,  cancel,  or  annul”  the 
patent at issue.  169 U. S., at 611–612. 

Nor  is  it  significant  that  the  McCormick  Court  “equated  invention 
patents with land patents.”  Post, at 10.  McCormick itself makes clear 
that  the  analogy  between  the  two  depended  on  the  particulars  of  the