1952 Act was in replacing the word “art” with the word “process.” The Supreme Court
has already concluded that this change did not alter the substantive understanding of
the statute. See Diehr, 450 U.S. at 182 (“[A] process has historically enjoyed patent
protection because it was considered a form of ‘art’ as that term was used in the 1793
Act.”).
The House Report accompanying the 1952 bill includes the now-famous
reference to “anything under the sun made by man”:
A person may have “invented” a machine or a manufacture, which may
include anything under the sun made by man, but it is not necessarily
patentable under section 101 unless the conditions of the title are fulfilled.
H.R. 1923 at 7. Although this passage has been used by our court in past cases to
justify a broad interpretation of patentable subject matter, I agree with Judge Mayer that,
when read in context, the statement undercuts the notion that Congress intended to
expand the scope of § 101. See Mayer, J., dissenting op. at 5-6. It refers to things
“made by man,” not to methods of organizing human activity. In this respect, the
language is reminiscent of the 1799 use of the phrase “something made by the hands of
man” by Chief Justice Lord Kenyon as a limitation on patentable subject matter under
the Statute of Monopolies. The idea that an invention must be “made by man” was
used to distinguish “a philosophical principle only, neither organized or capable of being
organized” from a patentable manufacture. Hornblower, 8 T.R. at 98. Lord Kenyon
held that the patent before him was not based on a mere principle, but was rather “a
patent for a manufacture, which I understand to be something made by the hands of
man.” Id. at 98 (emphases added); accord American Fruit Growers v. Brogdex Co., 283
2007-1130 19