The Supreme Court of the United States decided that:  

• An application of a natural law is not patentable if the steps used to apply the natural law involve well-understood, routine, conventional activity previously engaged in by researchers in the field.
• Additional features in a claimed inventions that add nothing specific to the laws of nature, natural phenomena, or abstract ideas other than what is well-understood, routine, conven­tional activity, previously engaged in by those in the field, do not make the claim patentable.