Cite as: 534 U. S. 124 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
Whatever Congress may have believed about the state of patent law and the science of plant breeding in 1930, plants have always had the potential to fall within the general subject matter of § 101, which is a dynamic provision designed to encompass new and unforeseen inventions. "A rule that unanticipated inventions are without protection would conflict with the core concept of the patent law that anticipation undermines patentability." Id., at 316.
Petitioners essentially ask us to deny utility patent protection for sexually reproduced plants because it was unforeseen in 1930 that such plants could receive protection under § 101. Denying patent protection under § 101 simply because such coverage was thought technologically infeasible in 1930, however, would be inconsistent with the forward-looking perspective of the utility patent statute. As we noted in Chakrabarty, "Congress employed broad general language in drafting § 101 precisely because [new types of] inventions are often unforeseeable." Ibid.
Second, petitioners maintain that the PPA's limitation to asexually reproduced plants would make no sense if Congress intended § 101 to authorize patents on plant varieties that were sexually reproduced. But this limitation once again merely reflects the reality of plant breeding in 1930. At that time, the primary means of reproducing bred plants true-to-type was through asexual reproduction. Congress thought that sexual reproduction through seeds was not a stable way to maintain desirable bred characteristics.7
7 The Senate Report accompanying the bill notes: "All such plants must be asexually reproduced in order to have their identity preserved. This is necessary since seedlings either of chance or self-pollenization from any of these would not preserve the character of the individual." S. Rep. No. 315, 71st Cong., 2d Sess., 3 (1930).
This Report, like the text, indicates Congress' intent to limit plant patent coverage to asexual reproduction, but explains that this limitation "recognizes a practical situation"—i. e., that propagation by seeds does not preserve the character of the original. See id., at 4 ("[T]he patent right granted is a right to propagate the new variety by asexual
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