Diamond V. Chakrabarty - Dissent

Dissent

The dissenting opinion was written by William J. Brennan, who was joined by Byron White, Thurgood Marshall, and Lewis Franklin Powell.

Brennan's dissent focused on the argument that there is evidence in the legislative record that the United States Congress did not intend living organisms to be patented.

We must be careful to extend patent protection no further than Congress has provided.

Brennan noted that "we do not confront a complete legislative vacuum", and commented on the 1930 Plant Patent Act and 1970 Plant Variety Protection Act, which explicitly allow patents for plants in certain cases:

The Acts evidence Congress' understanding, at least since 1930, that 101 does not include living organisms. If newly developed living organisms not naturally occurring had been patentable under 101, the plants included in the scope of the 1930 and 1970 Acts could have been patented without new legislation.

Therefore:

Because Congress thought it had to legislate in order to make agricultural "human-made inventions" patentable and because the legislation Congress enacted is limited, it follows that Congress never meant to make items outside the scope of the legislation patentable.

And with regard to the specifics of the 1970 act:

Congress specifically excluded bacteria from the coverage of the 1970 Act ... The fact is that Congress, assuming that animate objects as to which it had not specifically legislated could not be patented, excluded bacteria from the set of patentable organisms.

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