Beneficial Utility: Is it the kind of thing we want in society? Immoral or Illegal.
1.    Categories
a.    Deceptive inventions: Someone made product that looks like its mixing the drink in a transparent body  but in reality draws from sanitary tank, not the one you see. Court says this looks deceptive, no patent.
b.    Illegal inventions
c.    Immoral inventions: Courts generally do not strike down invention on pure moral grounds.
2.    Policy
a.    Purpose of system is to encourage people to make inventions, why encourage inventions for things that are illegal, immoral?
b.    Response: Societal attitudes change, what’s illegal today may change tomorrow, don’t want scramble to patent in the future like with BMP’s. Esp a problem for morality issues.
c.    Who decides morality? Don’t trust the courts, maybe Congress should decide. If we aren’t sure enough to make it illegal than maybe we shouldn’t prohibit patenting.
- Congressional Intent: Not clear Congress wanted courts to be doing this. Might say if they did
they could have written a law for this like trademarks. Or make them do it explicitly
d.    Double-edged Sword: If you don’t give patent protection to illegal/immoral/deceptive inventions, more people will make them.
3.    International Agreements: It’s possible that we’ll see a rise in use of beneficial utility bc many international patent agreements have exception saying if you deny patent due to immorality for your country, that’s okay, you can move away from uniform patent system.
4.    What about products with multiple uses, only some of which are beneficial?
- People could draft around it, write claim for the 2% okay stuff.
5.    Alternative: Give patent protection but then Congress makes the patent unenforceable. Ex. Medical procedures.
a.    Signaling Power: Patent is a form of recognition, glory of discovery.
b.    Infrastructure: If regime changes, patent infrastructure is in place to turn on patent protection.
c.    Disclosure: For beneficial utility, no public disclosure, don’t want people publicly telling people how to do illegal thing. Here, gov helps you disclose your invention.
- Why is this needed in medicine context, journals far more efficient? Who knows.