130
Opinion of the Court
Court. 200 F. 3d 1374 (2000). We granted certiorari, 531 U. S. 1143 (2001), and now affirm.
II
The question before us is whether utility patents may be issued for plants pursuant to 35 U. S. C. § 101 (1994 ed.). The text of § 101 provides:
"Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title."
As this Court recognized over 20 years ago in Chakrabarty, 447 U. S., at 308, the language of § 101 is extremely broad. "In choosing such expansive terms as 'manufacture' and 'composition of matter,' modified by the comprehensive 'any,' Congress plainly contemplated that the patent laws would be given wide scope." Ibid. This Court thus concluded in Chakrabarty that living things were patentable under § 101, and held that a manmade micro-organism fell within the scope of the statute. As Congress recognized, "the relevant distinction was not between living and inanimate things, but between products of nature, whether living or not, and human-made inventions." Id., at 313.
In Chakrabarty, the Court also rejected the argument that Congress must expressly authorize protection for new patentable subject matter:
"It is, of course, correct that Congress, not the courts, must define the limits of patentability; but it is equally true that once Congress has spoken it is 'the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.' Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803). Congress has performed its constitutional role in defining patentable subject matter in § 101; we perform ours in construing the language Congress has em-
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