Black letter

Also we discovered what is still more curious, an English version of the black-letter Latin.

The original boldface printing types are the blackletters used by Gutenberg in the 1440s. For the next two centuries, blackletter fonts were widely used not only in Germany but in France, Spain, the Netherlands and England.

[The US Supreme Court] did not raise the fundamental normative question of the patent-ability of genes. Instead, it took a black letter approach to interpreting the Patent Act, which had first been enacted in 1790, and which in its current form states that “whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.”