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- Because the framers of the United States
Constitution (written in 1787) believed that protecting
property rights relating to inventions would encourage
the new nation’s economic growth, they gave
- Congress—the national legislature—a constitutional
mandate to grant patents for inventions. The resulting
patent system has served as a model for those in
other nations. Recently, however, scholars have
questioned whether the American system helped
- achieve the framers’ goals. These scholars have
contended that from 1794 to roughly 1830, American
inventors were unable to enforce property rights
because judges were “antipatent” and routinely
invalidated patents for arbitrary reasons. This
- argument is based partly on examination of court
decisions in cases where patent holders (“patentees”)
brought suit alleging infringement of their patent
rights. In the 1820s, for instance, 75 percent
of verdicts were decided against the patentee.
- The proportion of verdicts for the patentee began to
increase in the 1830s, suggesting to these scholars
that judicial attitudes toward patent rights began
shifting then.
Not all patent disputes in the early nineteenth
- century were litigated, however, and litigated
cases were not drawn randomly from the
population of disputes. Therefore the rate of
verdicts in favor of patentees cannot be used
by itself to gauge changes in judicial attitudes
- or enforceability of patent rights. If early judicial
decisions were prejudiced against patentees, one
might expect that subsequent courts—allegedly
more supportive of patent rights—would reject
the former legal precedents. But pre-1830
- cases have been cited as frequently as later
decisions, and they continue to be cited today,
suggesting that the early decisions, many of
which clearly declared that patent rights were
a just recompense for inventive ingenuity,
- provided a lasting foundation for patent law.
The proportion of judicial decisions in favor of
patentees began to increase during the 1830s
because of a change in the underlying population
of cases brought to trial. This change was partly
- due to an 1836 revision to the patent system:
an examination procedure, still in use today, was
instituted in which each application is scrutinized
for its adherence to patent law. Previously,
patents were automatically granted upon payment
- of a $30 fee.
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