to grant software patents in a broad variety of circumstances. Although the U.S. Congress has never legislated specifically that software is patentable, the CAFC interpreted the broad description of patentable subject in section 101 of the Patent Act of 1952 and the failure of Congress to change the law after the CAFC decisions allowing software patents as an indication of Congressional intent. The reaction of the defeated-feeling USPTO was characterized in the cartoon shown at right, which appeared in IEEE Micro in 1995. Case law after 2000 The United States Supreme Court remained silent on these decisions and developments for years. The first response appeared in a dissenting opinion in LabCorp v. Metabolite, Inc. (2006). Although certiorari had been granted, the Court dismissed it as improvidently granted; the minority dissent argued that the question of statutory subject matter in patent law should be addressed. Justice Breyer's dissent stated: [State Street] does say that a process is patentable if it produces a 'useful, concrete, and tangible result.' But this Court has never made such a statement and, if taken literally, the statement would cover instances where this Court has held the contrary. He continues to directly address the claim that software loaded onto a computer is a physical device: . . . And the Court [in Gottschalk v. Benson] has invalidated a patent setting forth a process that transforms, for computer-programming purposes, decimal figures into binary figures—even though the result would seem useful, concrete, and at least arguably (within the computer's wiring system) tangible. At about the same time, in a concurring opinion in eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C., Justice Kennedy (joined by Justices Stevens, Souter, and Breyer) questioned the wisdom of permitting injunctions in support of "the burgeoning number of patents over business methods," because of their "potential vagueness and suspect validity" in some cases. Bilski case This was followed by the decision of the CAFC in In re Bilski, which opened a new chapter in this history. In Bilski, as the article on that case explains[What article?], the CAFC superseded State Street and related decisions with a return to the tests of the patent-eligibility trilogy (Benson-Flook-Diehr), although while those decisions had merely treated the machine-or-transformation test as a clue to past decisions the CAFC attempted to make that test dispositive. However, in 2009 the Supreme Court affirmed the judgment but overturned the CAFC's rationale in Bilski, stating that the