Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 1980

In the History of Software Patents, this was one of the more sensible cases.  Diamond v. Chakrabarty is another Supreme Court case. A genetic engineer named Chakrabarty had developed a bacterium capable of breaking down crude oil, which he proposed to use in treating oil spills. He requested a patent for the bacterium in the United States but was turned down by a patent examiner, because the law dictated that living things were not patentable.

The court held that a live, human-made micro-organism is patentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. 101. Chakrabarty’s micro-organism constitutes a “manufacture” or “composition of matter” within that statute.

The court stated that 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.”

The court took the position that 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 Section 101 do not include living things.

Nor does the fact that genetic technology was unforeseen when Congress enacted Section 101 require the conclusion that micro-organisms cannot qualify as patentable subject matter until Congress expressly authorizes such protection. The unambiguous language of Section 101 fairly embraces respondent’s invention. Arguments against patentability under Section 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.

This case is famous for taking the position that Congress had intended patentable subject matter to “include anything under the sun that is made by man”