As mentioned earlier, the original English approach taken in the U.S. Constitution was to emphasize the benefit of developing new inventions for society as a whole. Section 1 of the French Patent Act of 1791 took a slightly different approach: “All new discoveries are the property of the author; In order to guarantee the inventor ownership and temporary enjoyment of his discovery, a patent is granted for five, ten or fifteen years. The emphasis here was on the fact that the inventor had ownership of his discovery – an emphasis on the rights to the invention rather than the benefit to society. Today, this approach is of limited importance in the field of patents, but it is still so in the field of copyright, where the Anglo-Saxon approach focuses heavily on the set of economic rights associated with the control of the right of others to copy a work, while the French approach focuses more on moral rights – underlined by the fact that the word commonly called the French translation of the word “copyright” is “droit d`auteur”. (literally “copyright”). A number of changes were made in 1861. Among the most important are: the appointment of three chief auditors to hear objections from the first reviewers of an application that has been rejected twice; [27] modification of the duration of a utility model to seventeen years from the date of grant; [28] and the granting of three and a half, seven or fourteen years for designs chosen by the applicant. Other features of the 1861 revision included the printing of copies of the description and claims and the requirement that, in order to obtain damages for patent infringement, either the patented subject matter had to be marked as such or the infringer had to be otherwise informed of the existence of the patent. Each of the next six presidents – John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson – also acted in his official capacity by signing each U.S. patent to be granted. This practice continued until 1836. Each of these first U.S.

patents was signed by the President, Secretary of State, and Attorney General. In 1946, the law was amended to reflect the Supreme Court`s decision in Electric Storage Battery v. Shimadzu,[37] who had applied the principle of the “first inventor” of American law throughout the world. The law limited the first-to-inventor principle to situations where evidence of the invention could be found in the United States. Thus, on January 8, 1790, President George Washington delivered the first-ever annual message to a joint session of Congress (now known as the State of the Union address) in the Senate Chamber of Federal Hall in New York City. He begged Congress to pass a patent bill to move the country with “new and useful inventions” and “the efforts of skill and genius in their production.” James Puckle`s machine gun patent of 1718 was one of the first to provide a specification. In addition, in 1785, the patent for Arkwright`s famous spinning machines became invalid due to lack of adequate specifications; This happened after the patent existed for 10 years! This legal system has become the basis of patent law in countries with common law heritage, including the United States, New Zealand and Australia. In the Thirteen Colonies, inventors could obtain patents through a petition to the legislature of a particular colony. In 1641, Samuel Winslow received the first patent in North America from the Massachusetts General Court for a new salt-making process. [18] Legislative developments up to the mid-90s largely focused on specific and relatively minor issues arising either from case law or from certain economic developments, notably in the compromise reached in 1984, which facilitated the approval of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the sale of generic drugs.

after the expiry of a patent. Extending the term of a patent for a pharmaceutical invention to compensate the original inventor for the marketing delays the original manufacturer faced while awaiting FDA approval. Congress responded by writing and passing one of its first laws, the Patent Act of 1790. Soon after, George Washington signed the first-ever U.S. patent granted to Samuel Hopkins for a process for producing potash, a useful ingredient in fertilizers and other compounds. The origin of the concept of patents is obscure. There is reasonable evidence that something similar to a patent system was used in some ancient Greek cities, although it is generally accepted by historians that the first informal system originated in Renaissance Italy in 1474. 1. The Supreme Court considers the criteria to be applied in assessing the obviousness of KSR v. Teleflex. [52] 2.

Establish non-traditional examination channels such as patent granting highways and peer reviews in an attempt to speed up and improve the quality of patent examination. 3. New attempt at patent law reform (not enacted). Abraham Lincoln (No. 16) is known as the only president to ever receive a patent No. 6469 for his own invention. It was the year 1849 and marked the beginning of a 20-year period of the fastest growth of patents and applications. See Alan Marco, et. al, USPTO Historical Patent Data Files: Two Centuries of Invention, Working Paper 2015-1 (Office of the USPTO Chief Economist, June 2015) (Fig. 4-5 and discussion at pages 16-17). The first documented modern patent was granted in 1421 by the city-state of Florence to Filippo Brunelleschi, famous for the construction of the dome of Florence Cathedral. Brunelleschi`s patent related to the invention of a means of transporting heavy loads (especially large marble slabs) to the Arno for the construction of Florence Cathedral.