Opinion ID: 209543
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 12

Heading: The public has relied on the rulings of this court and of the Supreme Court

Text: The decisions in Alappat and State Street Bank confirmed the patent eligibility of many evolving areas of commerce, as inventors and investors explored new technological capabilities. The public and the economy have experienced extraordinary advances in information-based and computer-managed processes, supported by an enlarging patent base. The PTO reports that in Class 705, the examination classification associated with business methods and most likely to receive inventions that may not use machinery or transform physical matter, there were almost 10,000 patent applications filed in FY 2006 alone, and over 40,000 applications filed since FY 98 when State Street Bank was decided. See Wynn W. Coggins, USPTO, Update on Business Methods for the Business Methods Partnership Meeting 6 (2007) (hereinafter  PTO Report ), available at http:// www.uspto.gov/web/menu/pbmethod/ partnership.pps. An amicus in the present case reports that over 15,000 patents classified in Class 705 have issued. See Br. of Amicus Curiae Accenture, at 22 n.20. [4] The industries identified with information-based and data-handling processes, as several amici curiae explain and illustrate, include fields as diverse as banking and finance, insurance, data processing, industrial engineering, and medicine. Stable law, on which industry can rely, is a foundation of commercial advance into new products and processes. Inventiveness in the computer and information services fields has placed the United States in a position of technological and commercial preeminence. The information technology industry is reported to be the key factor responsible for reversing the 20-year productivity slow-down from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s and in driving today's robust productivity growth. R.D. Atkinson & A.S. McKay, Digital Prosperity: Understanding the Economic Benefits of the Information Technology Revolution 10 (Info. Tech. & Innovation Found.2007), available at http://www.itif.org/files/ digital_prosperity.pdf. By revenue estimates, in 2005 the software and information sectors constituted the fourth largest industry in the United States, with significantly faster growth than the overall U.S. economy. Software & Info. Indus. Ass'n, Software and Information: Driving the Knowledge Economy 7-8 (2008), http:// www.siia.net/estore/globecon-08.pdf. A Congressional Report in 2006 stated: As recently as 1978, intangible assets, such as intellectual property, accounted for 20 percent of corporate assets with the vast majority of value (80 percent) attributed to tangible assets such as facilities and equipment. By 1997, the trend reversed; 73 percent of corporate assets were intangible and only 27 percent were tangible. H.R.Rep. No. 109-673 (accompanying a bill concerning judicial resources). This powerful economic move toward intangibles is a challenge to the backward-looking change of this court's ruling today. Until the shift represented by today's decision, statute and precedent have provided stability in the rapidly moving and commercially vibrant fields of the Information Age. Despite the economic importance of these interests, the consequences of our decision have not been considered. I don't know how much human creativity and commercial activity will be devalued by today's change in law; but neither do my colleagues. The Section 101 interpretation that is now uprooted has the authority of years of reliance, and ought not be disturbed absent the most compelling reasons. Considerations of stare decisis have special force in the area of statutory interpretation, for here, unlike in the context of constitutional interpretation, the legislative power is implicated, and Congress remains free to alter what [the courts] have done. Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13, 23, 125 S.Ct. 1254, 161 L.Ed.2d 205 (2005) (quoting Patterson v. McLean Credit Union, 491 U.S. 164, 172-73, 109 S.Ct. 2363, 105 L.Ed.2d 132 (1989)); see also Hilton v. S.C. Pub. Railways Comm'n, 502 U.S. 197, 205, 112 S.Ct. 560, 116 L.Ed.2d 560 (1991) (in cases of statutory interpretation the importance of adhering to prior rulings is most compelling). Where, as here, Congress has not acted to modify the statute in the many years since Diehr and the decisions of this court, the force of stare decisis is even stronger. See Shepard, 544 U.S. at 23, 125 S.Ct. 1254. Adherence to settled law, resulting in settled expectations, is of particular importance in cases involving property and contract rights, where reliance interests are involved. Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U.S. 808, 828, 111 S.Ct. 2597, 115 L.Ed.2d 720 (1991); see also United States v. Title Ins. & Trust Co., 265 U.S. 472, 486, 44 S.Ct. 621, 68 L.Ed. 1110 (1924) (declining to overrule precedent where prior ruling has become a rule of property, and to disturb it now would be fraught with many injurious results). This rationale is given no weight by my colleagues, as this court gratuitously disrupts decades of law underlying our own rulings. The only announced support for today's change appears to be the strained new reading of Supreme Court quotations. But this court has previously read these decades-old opinions differently, without objection by either Congress or the Court. My colleagues do not state a reason for their change of heart. See Benjamin N. Cardozo, The Nature of the Judicial Process 149 (1921) ([T]he labor of judges would be increased almost to the breaking point if every past decision could be reopened in every case, and one could not lay one's own course of bricks on the secure foundation of the courses laid by others who had gone before him.). It is the legislature's role to change the law if the public interest so requires. In Chakrabarty the Court stated: The choice we are urged to make is a matter of high policy for resolution within the legislative process after the kind of investigation, examination, and study that legislative bodies can provide and courts cannot. 447 U.S. at 317, 100 S.Ct. 2204; see also Flook, 437 U.S. at 595, 98 S.Ct. 2522 (Difficult questions of policy concerning the kinds of programs that may be appropriate for patent protection and the form and duration of such protection can be answered by Congress on the basis of current empirical data not equally available to this tribunal.). It is, however, the judicial obligation to assure a correct, just, and reliable judicial process, and particularly to respect the principles of stare decisis in an area in which prior and repeated statutory interpretations have been relied upon by others. See, e.g., Shepard, 544 U.S. at 23, 125 S.Ct. 1254 ([T]he claim to adhere to case law is generally powerful once a decision has settled statutory meaning.); Hilton, 502 U.S. at 202, 112 S.Ct. 560 (Adherence to precedent promotes stability, predictability, and respect for judicial authority.); Payne, 501 U.S. at 827, 111 S.Ct. 2597 ( Stare decisis is the preferred course because it promotes the evenhanded, predictable, and consistent development of legal principles, fosters reliance on judicial decisions, and contributes to the actual and perceived integrity of the judicial process.). These considerations appear to be abandoned.