Useful art, or useful arts or technics, is concerned with the skills and methods of practical subjects such as manufacture and craftsmanship. The phrase has now gone out of fashion, but it was used during the

Victorian era In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardia ...

and earlier as an antonym to the

performing art The performing arts are arts such as music, dance, and drama which are performed for an audience. They are different from the visual arts, which are the use of paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. Perfor ...

and the

fine art In European academic traditions, fine art is developed primarily for aesthetics or creative expression, distinguishing it from decorative art or applied art, which also has to serve some practical function, such as pottery or most metalwor ...

. The term "useful Arts" is used in the United States Constitution, Article One, Section 8, Clause 8 which is the basis of United States

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

and

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...

law:

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;..."

According to the

US Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point of ...

, the phrase "useful Arts" is meant to reference inventions. There is controversy in the Court as to whether or not this includes

business method A business process, business method or business function is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks by people or equipment in which a specific sequence produces a service or product (serves a particular business goal) for a parti ...

s. In the majority opinion for ''

In re Bilski ''In re Bilski'', 545 F.3d 943, 88 U.S.P.Q.2d 1385 (Fed. Cir. 2008), was an ''en banc'' decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on the patenting of method claims, particularly business methods. The Federal C ...

'',In re Bilski, 545 F.3d 943, 88 U.S.P.Q.2d 1385 (2008) Justice

Anthony Kennedy Anthony McLeod Kennedy (born July 23, 1936) is an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1988 until his retirement in 2018. He was nominated to the court in 1987 by Presid ...

states "the Patent Act leaves open the possibility that there are at least some processes that can be fairly described as business methods that are within patentable subject matter under §101." At the appellate level, Federal Circuit Court Judge Mayer disagreed because he did not consider the claimed business method to be within the useful arts.See als
Malla Pollack
"The Multiple Unconstitutionality of Business Method Patents: Common Sense, Congressional Choice, and Constitutional History" 61 Rutgers Computer & Tech. L.J. 28 (2002); Micro Law, "What Kinds of Computer-Software-Related Advances (if Any) Are Eligible for Patents? Part II: The Useful Arts Requirement," IEEE MICRO (Sept.-Oct. 2008) (available at http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/claw/KindsElg-II.pdf and http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=4659278&isnumber=4659262.pdf).

References

The arts Patent law {{Law-term-stub

See also

References