Court Opinion

ID: 9427293
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:20:20.623646+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:05.967863
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stewart,
with whom The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Rehnquist join, dissenting.
It is a commonplace that laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas are not patentable subject matter.1 A patent could not issue, in other words, on the law of gravity, or the multiplication tables, or the phenomena of magnetism, or the fact that water at sea level boils at 100 degrees centigrade and freezes at zero — even though newly discovered. Le Roy v. Tatham, 14 How. 156, 175; O’Reilly v. Morse, 15 How. 62, 112-121; Rubber-Tip Pencil Co. v. Howard, 20 Wall. *599498, 507; Tilghman v. Proctor, 102 U. S. 707; Mackay Radio & Telegraph Co. v. Radio Corp. of America, 306 U. S. 86, 94; Funk Bros. Seed Co. v. Kalo Co., 333 U. S. 127, 130.
The recent case of Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U. S. 63, stands for no more than this long-established principle, which the Court there stated in the following words:
“Phenomena of nature, though just discovered, mental processes, and abstract intellectual concepts are not patentable, as they are the basic tools of scientific and technological work.” Id., at 67.
In Benson the Court held unpatentable claims for an algorithm that “were not limited to any particular art or technology, to any particular apparatus or machinery, or to any particular end use.” Id., at 64. A patent on such claims, the Court said, “would wholly pre-empt the mathematical formula and in practical effect would be a patent on the algorithm itself.” Id., at 72.
The present case is a far different one. The issue here is whether a claimed process2 loses its status of subject-matter patentability simply because one step in the process would not be patentable subject matter if considered in isolation. The Court of Customs and Patent Appeals held that the process is patentable subject matter, Benson being inapplicable since “ [t]he present claims do not preempt the formula or algorithm contained therein, because solution of the algorithm, per se, would not infringe the claims.” In re Flook, 559 F. 2d 21, 23.
That decision seems to me wholly in conformity with basic principles of patent law. Indeed, I suppose that thousands of processes and combinations have been patented that contained one or more steps or elements that themselves would have been *600unpatentable subject matter.3 Eibel Process Co. v. Minnesota & Ontario Paper Co., 261 U. S. 45, is a case in point. There the Court upheld the validity of an improvement patent that made use of the law of gravity, which by itself was clearly unpatentable. See also, e. g., Tilghman v. Proctor, supra.
The Court today says it does not turn its back on these well-settled precedents, ante, at 594, but it strikes what seems to me an equally damaging blow at basic principles of patent law by importing into its inquiry under 35 U. S. C. § 101 the criteria of novelty and inventiveness. Section 101 is concerned only with subject-matter patentability. Whether a patent will actually issue depends upon the criteria of §§ 102 and 103, which include novelty and inventiveness, among many others. It may well be that under the criteria of §§ 102 and 103 no patent should issue on the process claimed in this case, because of anticipation, abandonment, obviousness, or for some other reason. But in my view the claimed process clearly meets the standards of subject-matter patentability of § 101.
In short, I agree with the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals in this case, and with the carefully considered opinions of that court in other cases presenting the same basic issue. See In re Freeman, 573 F. 2d 1237; In re Richman, 563 F. 2d 1026; In re De Castelet, 562 F. 2d 1236; In re Deutsch, 553 F. 2d 689; In re Chatfield, 545 F. 2d 152. Accordingly, I would affirm the judgment before us.

 Title 35 U. S. C. § 101 provides:
“Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.”

 Title 35 U. S. C. § 100 (b) provides:
“The term 'process’ means process, art or method, and includes a new use of a known process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter, or material.”

 In Gottschalk v. Benson, the Court equated process and product patents for the purpose of its inquiry: “We dealt there with a ‘product' claim, while the present case deals with a ‘process’ claim. But we think the same principle applies.” 409 U. S., at 67-68.