Still, it will be carefully read in Silicon Valley for indications of how specific technical ideas need to be to become eligible for patent protection. Patent claims over the way ideas are incorporated into computers, cellphones and other devices have become a challenge for many high-tech companies.

Justice Thomas indicated that the decision posed no threat to the concept of software patents. “There is no dispute,” he wrote, “that many computer-implemented claims are formally addressed to patent-eligible subject matter.”

Many technology companies have interests that tug in opposite directions. They tend to hold large portfolios of valuable patents and want to protect them. But they must also contend with “patent trolls,” companies that have obtained patents on sometimes vague concepts and that are more active in the courthouse than on the production line.

The patents at issue in Thursday’s case were owned by the Alice Corporation, an Australian company that developed a method for mitigating settlement risks among multiple parties. In its Supreme Court brief, the company said the method was eligible to be patented largely because it involved shadow records updated in real time that “require a substantial and meaningful role for the computer.”

The patents were challenged by CLS Bank International, which says it clears $5 trillion in foreign exchange transactions a day using methods to ensure that both sides performed. Alice Corporation’s patents, the bank said, merely recited “the fundamental economic concept of intermediated settlement of escrow.”