148
Breyer, J., dissenting
Chakrabarty, in considering the scope of the Utility Patent Statute's language "manufacture, or composition of matter," 35 U. S. C. § 101 (1994 ed.), asked whether those words included such living things as bacteria—a substance to which neither of the two specific plant Acts refers. 447 U. S., at 313-314. The Court held that the Utility Patent Statute language included a "new" bacterium because it was "a nonnaturally occurring manufacture or composition of matter" that was "not nature's handiwork." Id., at 309-310. It quoted language from a congressional Committee Report indicating that "Congress intended statutory subject matter to 'include anything under the sun that is made by man.' " Id., at 309 (quoting S. Rep. No. 1979, 82d Cong., 2d Sess., 5 (1952); H. R. Rep. No. 1923, 82d Cong., 2d Sess., 6 (1952)). But it nowhere said or implied that this Utility Patent Statute language also includes the very subject matter with which the two specific statutes deal, namely, plants. Whether a bacterium technically speaking is, or is not, a plant, the Court considered it a "life form," and not the kind of "plant" that the two specific statutes had in mind. 447 U. S., at 314 (noting that the PVPA specifically excluded bacteria, and that the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals had held that bacteria were not plants for purposes of the PPA).
The Court did consider a complicated argument that sought indirectly to relate the two specific plant statutes to the issue before it. That argument went roughly as follows: (1) Congress enacted two special statutes related to plants. (2) Even though those two statutes do not cover bacteria, the fact that Congress enacted them shows that Congress thought the Utility Patent Statute's language ("manufacture, or composition of matter") did not cover any living thing, including bacteria. (3) Congress consequently must have intended the two special Acts to provide exclusive protection for all forms of "life" whether they do, or do not, count as the kinds of "plants" to which the specific statutes refer.
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