The United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted patents that may be referred to as software patents since at least the early 1970s. In Gottschalk v. Benson (1972), the United States Supreme Court ruled that a patent for a process should not be allowed if it would "wholly pre-empt the mathematical formula and in practical effect would be a patent on the algorithm itself", adding that "it is said that the decision precludes a patent for any program servicing a computer. We do not so hold." In 1981, the Supreme Court stated that "a claim drawn to subject matter otherwise statutory does not become nonstatutory simply because it uses a mathematical formula, computer program, or digital computer" and a claim is patentable if it contains "a mathematical formula implements or applies the formula in a structure or process which, when considered as a whole, is performing a function which the patent laws were designed to protect".