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 and earlier as an antonym to the
performing art and the
fine art.[1]
"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 phrase "useful Arts" is meant to reference inventions.[2] There is controversy in the Court as to whether or not this includes
business methods. In the majority opinion for In re Bilski,[2] Justice
Anthony Kennedy 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.[3]
^George Washington used the term in a letter to Lafayette (Jan. 29, 1798). Washington distinguished commerce from useful arts by stating, “While our commerce has been considerably curtailed for want of that extensive credit formerly given in Europe, and for default of remittance; the useful arts have been almost imperceptibly pushed to a considerable degree of perfection.” THE WRITINGS OF GEORGE WASHINGTON FROM THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT SOURCES, 1732-1799 (Fitzpatrick ed.). Other literary sources are collected in the PTO Supp. Br., In re Bilski, p. 11 n.4 (useful arts are manufacturing processes).