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machinery is electrons, photons, or waves, or whose product is not a transformed 
physical substance. 
The English Statute of Monopolies and English common law do not limit 
“process” in Section 101 
 
I comment on this aspect in view of the proposal in the concurring opinion that 
this court’s new two-prong test for Section 101 process inventions was implicit in United 
States law starting with the Act of 1790, because of Congress’s knowledge of and 
importation of English common law and the English Statute of Monopolies of 1623.  The 
full history of patent law in England is too ambitious to be achieved within the confines 
of Bilski’s appeal,
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 and the concurring opinion’s selective treatment of this history may 
propagate misunderstanding. 
The concurrence places primary reliance on the Statute of Monopolies, which 
was enacted in response to the monarchy’s grant of monopolies “to court favorites in 
goods or businesses which had long before been enjoyed by the public.”  Graham v. 
John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 5 (1966) (citing Peter Meinhardt, Inventions, Patents and 
                                            
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Scholarly histories include M. Frumkin, The Origin of Patents, 27 J.P.O.S. 
143 (1945); E. Wyndham Hulme, Privy Council Law and Practice of Letters Patent for 
Invention from the Restoration to 1794, 33 L.Q. Rev. 63 (Part I), 180 (Part II) (1917); 
Hulme, On the History of Patent Law in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, 18 
L.Q. Rev. 280 (1902); Hulme, The History of the Patent System Under the Prerogative 
and at Common Law, 12 L.Q. Rev. 141 (1896); Ramon A. Klitzke, Historical 
Background of the English Patent Law, 41 J.P.O.S 615 (1959); Christine MacLeod, 
Inventing the Industrial Revolution:  The English Patent System 1660-1800 (1988); 
Frank D. Prager, Historic Background and Foundation of American Patent Law, 5 Am. J. 
Legal Hist. 309 (1961); Brad Sherman & Lionel Bently, The Making of Modern 
Intellectual Property Law: The British Experience , 1760-1911 (1999); Edward C. 
Walterscheid,  The Early Evolution of the United States Patent Law:  Antecedents, 
printed serially at J. Pat. & Trademark Off. Soc’y (“J.P.T.O.S.”) 76:697 (1994) (Part 1); 
76:849 (1994) (Part 2); 77:771, 847 (1995) (Part 3); 78:77 (1996) (Part 4); 78:615 
(1996) (Part 5, part I); and 78:665 (1996) (Part 5, part II) (hereinafter “Early Evolution”); 
and Edward C. Walterscheid, To Promote the Progress of Useful Arts:  American Patent 
Law and Administration, 1798-1836 (1998). 
2007-1130 
 
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