Proctor the Court considered a patent on a process for separating fats and oils, and
held that the process was not restricted to any particular apparatus. The Court held that
a process is an independent category of invention, and stated:
That a patent can be granted for a process, there can be no doubt. The
patent law is not confined to new machines and new compositions of
matter, but extends to any new and useful art or manufacture.
102 U.S. at 722; see also Corning v. Burden, 56 U.S. (15 How.) 252, 268 (1853) (“It is
for the discovery or invention of some practical method or means of producing a
beneficial result or effect, that a patent is granted, and not for the result or effect itself.”)
The difference between a process and the other categories of patent-eligible subject
matter does not deprive process inventions of the independent status accorded by
statute, by precedent, and by logic, all of which negate the court’s new rule that a
process must be tied to a particular machine or must transform physical matter.
The majority also relies on O’Reilly v. Morse, citing the Court’s rejection of
Morse’s Claim 8 for “the use of the motive power of the electro or galvanic current,
which I call electromagnetism, however developed, for making or printing intelligible
characters, signs or letters at any distances . . . .” The Court explained:
In fine he claims an exclusive right to use a manner and process which he
has not described and indeed had not invented, and therefore could not
describe when he obtained his patent. The Court is of the opinion that the
claim is too broad, and not warranted by law.
56 U.S. (15 How.) at 113. However, the claims that were directed to the communication
system that was described by Morse were held patentable, although no machine,
transformation, or manufacture was required. See Morse’s Claim 5 (“The system of
signs, consisting of dots and spaces, and horizontal lines, for numerals, letters, words,
or sentences, substantially as herein set forth and illustrated, for telegraphic
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