Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/447/303/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 16:08:47+00:00

Document:
Patent protection is available for a micro-organism that is artificially constructed rather than naturally occurring.
Chakrabarty, a scientist, sought patent protection related to his discovery of a method for developing a bacterium that could break down multiple components of crude oil. His claims ranged from the process of developing the bacterium to the bacterium itself and an inoculum in which the bacterium was stored with a carrier material. While the examiner found that a patent was appropriate for the process and the inoculum, Chakrabarty was denied a patent for the bacterium itself on the grounds that it did not meet the subject matter requirements for a patent. Under 35 U.S.C. Section 101 and the 1930 Plant Patent Act, according to the patent examiner, a living organism may not be patented. Various appellate review panels reached clashing decisions on the matter before the Acting Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks sought certiorari review from the Supreme Court.
Acknowledging that patents cannot protect laws of nature or physical phenomena, Burger still felt that a broad interpretation of 35 U.S.C. Section 101 and particularly the term "manufacture" was appropriate. He found that "manufacture" should have the same expansive meaning as in an ordinary dictionary. Burger also held that the 1930 Plant Patent Act did not necessitate the examiner's interpretation, since that law was intended to separate products of nature from products of human ingenuity. The bacterium was a product of Chakrabarty's own ingenuity because it did not occur in nature.
Burger also rejected the theory that express authorization from Congress would be required to permit patent protection for micro-organisms, since Congress could not have foreseen this evolution in science when drafting the original patent laws. Patents are designed to reward ingenuity and invention, according to Burger, so it would undermine the policy supporting them to deny protection to unforeseen inventions.
Brennan advocated for a narrower interpretation of the issue, limiting it to whether a living organism like a bacterium may be patentable rather than whether unforeseen inventions may be patentable. He agreed with the patent examiner that the 1930 Plant Patent Act prohibited patent protection for living organisms, which he saw as central to the Congressional purpose in crafting that law. Brennan also referred to a 1970 law that specifically excluded bacteria from patent protection.
Naturally occurring organisms and plants cannot be patented because human ingenuity is not responsible for creating them, but an artificial organism is the product of an individual's creativity and skill, so it deserves protection.
Held: A live, human-made micro-organism is patentable subject matter under § 101. Respondent's micro-organism constitutes a "manufacture" or "composition of matter" within that statute. Pp. 447 U. S. 308-318.
(a) In choosing such expansive terms as "manufacture" and "composition of matter," modified by the comprehensive "any," Congress contemplated that the patent laws should be given wide scope, and the relevant legislative history also supports a broad construction. While laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas are not patentable, respondent's claim is not to a hitherto unknown natural phenomenon, but to a nonnaturally occurring manufacture or composition of matter -- a product of human ingenuity "having a distinctive name, character [and] use." Hartranft v. Wiegmann, 121 U. S. 609, 121 U. S. 615. Funk Brothers Seed Co. v. Kalo Inoculant Co., 333 U. S. 127, distinguished. Pp. 447 U. S. 308-310.
(b) The passage of the 1930 Plant Patent Act, which afforded patent protection to certain asexually reproduced plants, and the 1970 Plant Variety Protection Act, which authorized protection for certain sexually reproduced plants but excluded bacteria from its protection, does not evidence congressional understanding that the terms "manufacture" or "composition of matter" in § 101 do not include living things. Pp. 447 U. S. 310-314.
(c) Nor does the fact that genetic technology was unforeseen when Congress enacted § 101 require the conclusion that micro-organisms cannot qualify as patentable subject matter until Congress expressly authorizes such protection. The unambiguous language of § 101 fairly embraces respondent's invention. Arguments against patentability under § 101, based on potential hazards that may be generated by genetic research, should be addressed to the Congress and the Executive, not to the Judiciary. Pp. 447 U. S. 314-318.
BURGER, C J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which STEWART, BLACKMUN, REHNQUIST, and STEVENS, JJ., joined. BRENNAN, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which WHITE, MARSHALL, and POWELL, JJ., joined, post, p. 447 U. S. 318.
"a bacterium from the genus Pseudomons containing therein at least two stable energy-generating plasmids, each of said plasmids providing a separate hydrocarbon degradative pathway. [Footnote 1]"
second, claims for an inoculum comprised of a carrier material floating on water, such as straw, and the new bacteria; and third, claims to the bacteria themselves. The patent examiner allowed the claims falling into the first two categories, but rejected claims for the bacteria. His decision rested on two grounds: (1) that micro-organisms are "products of nature," and (2) that, as living things, they are not patentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
Chakrabarty appealed the rejection of these claims to the Patent Office Board of Appeals, and the Board affirmed the examiner on the second ground. [Footnote 3] Relying on the legislative history of the 1930 Plant Patent Act, in which Congress extended patent protection to certain asexually reproduced plants, the Board concluded that § 101 was not intended to cover living things such as these laboratory created micro-organisms.
The Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, by a divided vote, reversed on the authority of its prior decision in In re Bergy, 563 F.2d 1031, 1038 (1977), which held that "the fact that micro-organisms . . . are alive . . . [is] without legal significance" for purposes of the patent law. [Footnote 4] Subsequently, we granted the Acting Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks' petition for certiorari in Bergy, vacated the judgment, and remanded the case "for further consideration in light of Parker v. Flook, 437 U. S. 584 (1978)." 438 U.S. 902 (1978). The Court of Customs and Patent Appeals then vacated its judgment in Chakrabarty and consolidated the case with Bergy for reconsideration. After reexamining both cases in the light of our holding in Flook, that court, with one dissent, reaffirmed its earlier judgments. 596 F.2d 952 (1979).
"[t]he productive effort thereby fostered will have a positive effect on society through the introduction of new products and processes of manufacture into the economy, and the emanations by way of increased employment and better lives for our citizens."
Kewanee, supra, at 416 U. S. 480.
In cases of statutory construction we begin, of course, with the language of the statute. Southeastern Community College v. Davis, 442 U. S. 397, 442 U. S. 405 (1979). And "unless otherwise defined, words will be interpreted as taking their ordinary, contemporary, common meaning." Perrin v. United States, 444 U. S. 37, 444 U. S. 42 (1979). We have also cautioned that courts "should not read into the patent laws limitations and conditions which the legislature has not expressed." United States v. Dubilier Condenser Corp., 289 U. S. 178, 289 U. S. 199 (1933) .
"the production of articles for use from raw or prepared materials by giving to these materials new forms, qualities, properties, or combinations, whether by hand labor or by machinery."
"all compositions of two or more substances and . . . all composite articles, whether they be the results of chemical union, or of mechanical mixture, or whether they be gases, fluids, powders or solids."
Shell Development Co. v. Watson, 149 F.Supp. 279, 280 (DC 1957) (citing 1 A. Deller, Walker on Patents § 14, p. 55 (1st ed.1937)). In choosing such expansive terms as "manufacture" and "composition of matter," modified by the comprehensive "any," Congress plainly contemplated that the patent laws would be given wide scope.
This is not to suggest that § 101 has no limits, or that it embraces every discovery. The laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas have been held not patentable. See Parker v. Flook, 437 U. S. 584 (1978); Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U. S. 63, 409 U. S. 67 (1972); Funk Brothers Seed Co. v. Kalo Inoculant Co., 333 U. S. 127, 333 U. S. 130 (1948); O'Reilly v. Morse, 15 How. 62, 56 U. S. 112-121 (1854); Le Roy v. Tatham, 14 How. 156, 55 U. S. 175 (1853). Thus, a new mineral discovered in the earth or a new plant found in the wild is not patentable subject matter. Likewise, Einstein could not patent his celebrated law that E=mc2; nor could Newton have patented the law of gravity. Such discoveries are "manifestations of . . . nature, free to all men and reserved exclusively to none." Funk, supra at 333 U. S. 130.
"Each of the species of root-nodule bacteria contained in the package infects the same group of leguminous plants which it always infected. No species acquires a different use. The combination of species produces no new bacteria, no change in the six species of bacteria, and no enlargement of the range of their utility. Each species has the same effect it always had. The bacteria perform in their natural way. Their use in combination does not improve in any way their natural functioning. They serve the ends nature originally provided, and act quite independently of any effort of the patentee."
333 U.S. at 333 U. S. 131. Here, by contrast, the patentee has produced a new bacterium with markedly different characteristics from any found in nature, and one having the potential for significant utility. His discovery is not nature's handiwork, but his own; accordingly it is patentable subject matter under § 101.
Variety Protection Act, which authorized protection for certain sexually reproduced plants but excluded bacteria from its protection. [Footnote 7] In the petitioner's view, the passage of these Acts evidences congressional understanding that the terms "manufacture" or "composition of matter" do not include living things; if they did, the petitioner argues, neither Act would have been necessary.
(1923). [Footnote 8] The second obstacle to patent protection for plants was the fact that plants were thought not amenable to the "written description" requirement of the patent law. See 35 U.S.C. § 112. Because new plants may differ from old only in color or perfume, differentiation by written description was often impossible. See Hearings on H.R. 11372 before the House Committee on Patents, 71st Cong., 2d Sess., 7 (1930) (memorandum of Patent Commissioner Robertson).
"There is a clear and logical distinction between the discovery of a new variety of plant and of certain inanimate things, such, for example, as a new and useful natural mineral. The mineral is created wholly by nature unassisted by man. . . . On the other hand, a plant discovery resulting from cultivation is unique, isolated, and is not repeated by nature, nor can it be reproduced by nature unaided by man. . . ."
S.Rep. No. 315, supra at 6; H.R.Rep. No. 1129, supra at 7 (emphasis added). Congress thus recognized that the relevant distinction was not between living and inanimate things, but between products of nature, whether living or not, and human-made inventions. Here, respondent's micro-organism is the result of human ingenuity and research. Hence, the passage of the Plant Patent Act affords the Government no support.
Nor does the passage of the 1970 Plant Variety Protection Act support the Government's position. As the Government acknowledges, sexually reproduced plants were not included under the 1930 Act because new varieties could not be reproduced true-to-type through seedlings. Brief for Petitioner 27, n. 31. By 1970, however, it was generally recognized that true-to-type reproduction was possible, and that plant patent protection was therefore appropriate. The 1970 Act extended that protection. There is nothing in its language or history to suggest that it was enacted because § 101 did not include living things.
Patent Appeals suggested, it may simply reflect congressional agreement with the result reached by that court in deciding In re Arzberger, 27 C.C.P.A.(Pat.) 1315, 112 F.2d 834 (1940), which held that bacteria were not plants for the purposes of the 1930 Act. Or it may reflect the fact that, prior to 1970, the Patent Office had issued patents for bacteria under § 101. [Footnote 9] In any event, absent some clear indication that Congress "focused on [the] issues . . . directly related to the one presently before the Court," SEC v. Sloan, 436 U. S. 103, 436 U. S. 120-121 (1978), there is no basis for reading into its actions an intent to modify the plain meaning of the words found in § 101. See TVA v. Hill, 437 U. S. 153, 437 U. S. 189-193 (1978); United States v. Price, 361 U. S. 304, 361 U. S. 313 (1960).
patent rights into areas wholly unforeseen by Congress." Id. at 437 U. S. 596.
It is, of course, correct that Congress, not the courts, must define the limits of patentability; but it is equally true that, once Congress has spoken, it is "the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is." Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 5 U. S. 177 (1803). Congress has performed its constitutional role in defining patentable subject matter in § 101; we perform ours in construing the language Congress has employed. In so doing, our obligation is to take statutes as we find them, guided, if ambiguity appears, by the legislative history and statutory purpose. Here, we perceive no ambiguity. The subject matter provisions of the patent law have been cast in broad terms to fulfill the constitutional and statutory goal of promoting "the Progress of Science and the useful Arts" with all that means for the social and economic benefits envisioned by Jefferson. Broad general language is not necessarily ambiguous when congressional objectives require broad terms.
Nothing in Flook is to the contrary. That case applied our prior precedents to determine that a "claim for an improved method of calculation, even when tied to a specific end use, is unpatentable subject matter under § 101." 437 U.S. at 437 U. S. 595, n. 18. The Court carefully scrutinized the claim at issue to determine whether it was precluded from patent protection under "the principles underlying the prohibition against patents for ideas' or phenomena of nature." Id. at 437 U. S. 593. We have done that here. Flook did not announce a new principle that inventions in areas not contemplated by Congress when the patent laws were enacted are unpatentable per se.
To buttress his argument, the petitioner, with the support of amicus, points to grave risks that may be generated by research endeavors such as respondent's. The briefs present a gruesome parade of horribles. Scientists, among them Nobel laureates, are quoted suggesting that genetic research may pose a serious threat to the human race, or, at the very least, that the dangers are far too substantial to permit such research to proceed apace at this time. We are told that genetic research and related technological developments may spread pollution and disease, that it may result in a loss of genetic diversity, and that its practice may tend to depreciate the value of human life. These arguments are forcefully, even passionately, presented; they remind us that, at times, human ingenuity seems unable to control fully the forces it creates -- that, with Hamlet, it is sometimes better "to bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of."
"[o]ur individual appraisal of the wisdom or unwisdom of a particular [legislative] course . . . is to be put aside in the process of interpreting a statute."
TVA v. Hill, 437 U.S. at 437 U. S. 194. Our task, rather, is the narrow one of determining what Congress meant by the words it used in the statute; once that is done, our powers are exhausted. Congress is free to amend § 101 so as to exclude from patent protection organisms produced by genetic engineering. Cf. 42 U.S.C. § 2181(a), exempting from patent protection inventions "useful solely in the utilization of special nuclear material or atomic energy in an atomic weapon." Or it may choose to craft a statute specifically designed for such living things. But, until Congress takes such action, this Court must construe the language of § 101 as it is. The language of that section fairly embraces respondent's invention.
At present, biological control of oil spills requires the use of a mixture of naturally occurring bacteria, each capable of degrading one component of the oil complex. In this way, oil is decomposed into simpler substances which can serve as food for aquatic life. However, for various reasons, only a portion of any such mixed culture survives to attack the oil spill. By breaking down multiple components of oil, Chakrabarty's microorganism promises more efficient and rapid oil-spill control.
Bergy involved a patent application for a pure culture of the microorganism Streptomuces vellosus found to be useful in the production of lincomycin, an antibiotic.
This case does not involve the other "conditions and requirements" of the patent laws, such as novelty and nonobviousness. 35 U.S.C. §§ 102, 103.
"[U]nder section 101, a person may have invented a machine or a manufacture, which may include anything under the sun that is made by man. . . ."
"Whoever invents or discovers and asexually reproduces any distinct and new variety of plant, including cultivated sports, mutants, hybrids, and newly found seedlings, other than a tuber propagated plant or a plant found in an uncultivated state, may obtain a patent therefor. . . ."
"The breeder of any novel variety of sexually reproduced plant (other than fungi, bacteria, or first generation hybrids) who has so reproduced the variety, or his successor in interest, shall be entitled to plant variety protection therefor. . . ."
84 Stat. 1547, 7 U.S.C. § 2402(a). See generally 3 A. Deller, Walker on Patents, ch. IX (2d ed.1964); R. Allyn, The First Plant Patents (1934).
"It is a little hard for plant men to understand why [Art. I, § 8] of the Constitution should not have been earlier construed to include the promotion of the art of plant breeding. The reason for this is probably to be found in the principle that natural products are not patentable."
Florists Exchange and Horticultural Trade World, July 15, 1933, p. 9.
We are not to be understood as suggesting that the political branches have been laggard in the consideration of the problems related to genetic research and technology. They have already taken action. In 1976, for example, the National Institutes of Health released guidelines for NIH-sponsored genetic research which established conditions under which such research could be performed. 41 Fed.Reg. 27902. In 1978, those guidelines were revised and relaxed. 43 Fed.Reg. 60080, 60108, 60134. And Committees of the Congress have held extensive hearings on these matters. See, e.g., Hearings on Genetic Engineering before the Subcommittee on Health of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, 94th Cong., 1st Sess. (1975); Hearings before the Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, 95th Cong., 1st Sess. (1977); Hearings on H.R. 4759 et al. before the Subcommittee on Health and the Environment of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 95th Cong., 1st Sess. (1977).
The patent laws attempt to reconcile this Nation's deep-seated antipathy to monopolies with the need to encourage progress. Deepsouth Packing Co. v. Laitram Corp., 406 U. S. 518, 406 U. S. 530-531 (1972); Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U. S. 1, 383 U. S. 7-10 (1966). Given the complexity and legislative nature of this delicate task, we must be careful to extend patent protection no further than Congress has provided. In particular, were there an absence of legislative direction, the courts should leave to Congress the decisions whether and how far to extend the patent privilege into areas where the common understanding has been that patents are not available. [Footnote 2/1] Cf. Deepsouth Packing Co. v. Laitram Corp., supra.
First, the Acts evidence Congress' understanding, at least since 1930, that § 101 does not include living organisms. If newly developed living organisms not naturally occurring had been patentable under § 101, the plants included in the scope of the 1930 and 1970 Acts could have been patented without new legislation. Those plants, like the bacteria involved in this case, were new varieties not naturally occurring. [Footnote 2/3] Although the Court, ante at 447 U. S. 311, rejects this line of argument, it does not explain why the Acts were necessary unless to correct a preexisting situation. [Footnote 2/4] I cannot share the Court's implicit assumption that Congress was engaged in either idle exercises or mere correction of the public record when it enacted the 1930 and 1970 Acts. And Congress certainly thought it was doing something significant. The Committee Reports contain expansive prose about the previously unavailable benefits to be derived from extending patent protection to plants. [Footnote 2/5] H.R.Rep.
No. 91-1605, pp. 1-3 (1970); S.Rep. No. 315, 71st Cong., 2d Sess., 1-3 (1930). Because Congress thought it had to legislate in order to make agricultural "human-made inventions" patentable, and because the legislation Congress enacted is limited, it follows that Congress never meant to make items outside the scope of the legislation patentable.
I read the Court to admit that the popular conception, even among advocates of agricultural patents, was that living organisms were unpatentable. See ante at 447 U. S. 311-312, and n. 8.
But even if I agreed with the Court that the 1930 and 1970 Acts were not dispositive, I would dissent. This case presents even more cogent reasons than Deepsouth Packing Co. not to extend the patent monopoly in the face of uncertainty. At the very least, these Acts are signs of legislative attention to the problems of patenting living organisms, but they give no affirmative indication of congressional intent that bacteria be patentable. The caveat of Parker v. Flook, 437 U. S. 584, 437 U. S. 596 (1978), an admonition to "proceed cautiously when we are asked to extend patent rights into areas wholly unforeseen by Congress," therefore becomes pertinent. I should think the necessity for caution is that much greater when we are asked to extend patent rights into areas Congress has foreseen and considered, but has not resolved.
The Court refers to the logic employed by Congress in choosing not to perpetuate the "dichotomy" suggested by Secretary Hyde. Ante at 447 U. S. 313. But by this logic, the bacteria at issue here are distinguishable from a "mineral . . . created wholly by nature" in exactly the same way as were the new varieties of plants. If a new Act was needed to provide patent protection for the plants, it was equally necessary for bacteria. Yet Congress provided for patents on plants, but not on these bacteria. In short, Congress decided to make only a subset of animate "human-made inventions," ibid., patentable.
If the 1930 Act's only purpose were to solve the technical problem of description referred to by the Court, ante at 447 U. S. 312, most of the Act, and in particular its limitation to asexually reproduced plants, would have been totally unnecessary.
"Under the patent law, patent protection is limited to those varieties of plants which reproduce asexually, that is, by such methods as grafting or budding. No protection is available to those varieties of plants which reproduce sexually, that is, generally by seeds."
S.Rep. No. 91-1246, p. 3 (1970). Similarly, Representative Poage, speaking for the 1970 Act, after noting the protection accorded asexually developed plants, stated that, "for plants produced from seed, there has been no such protection." 116 Cong.Rec. 40295 (1970).

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