The Role of the U.S. Legal System Quiz

PDF page 37: In Britain and other European countries, patents were viewed as “pernicious monopolies that restricted

PDF page 37: In the United States, however, early courts treated inventors’ patent rights with deference, just as they did the rights of other property owners. Famed Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story repeatedly declared that patent rights were “sacred” and were the just reward for inventive ingenuity. As he noted in Lowell v. Lewis (https://openstax.org/l/Lowell_v_Lewis) (1817), “the proper duty of the court” is to ensure that “wrongdoers may not reap the fruits of the labor and genius of other men.” The relative uniformity and certainty of enforcement of patent rights by the courts also proved critical in

PDF page 37: In the United States, however, early courts treated inventors’ patent rights with deference, just as they did the rights of other property owners. Famed Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story repeatedly declared that patent rights were “sacred” and were the just reward for inventive ingenuity. As he noted in Lowell v. Lewis (https://openstax.org/l/Lowell_v_Lewis) (1817), “the proper duty of the court” is to ensure that “wrongdoers may not reap the fruits of the labor and genius of other men.” The relative uniformity and certainty of enforcement of patent rights by the courts also proved critical in

PDF page 38: encouraging capital to invest in commercializing those patent rights. Contrasting the patent laws and policies of the United States and Britain, Supreme Court Justice Henry Baldwin went to some lengths in Whitney v. Emmett (https://openstax.org/l/Whitney_v_Emmett) (1831) to show how English courts saw patents as a zero-sum trade-off between private rights and the public good. The explicit intention of U.S. patent law, however, was “to benefit the inventor, in the belief that maximizing individual welfare leads to maximum social welfare.”

PDF page 38: encouraging capital to invest in commercializing those patent rights. Contrasting the patent laws and policies of the United States and Britain, Supreme Court Justice Henry Baldwin went to some lengths in Whitney v. Emmett (https://openstax.org/l/Whitney_v_Emmett) (1831) to show how English courts saw patents as a zero-sum trade-off between private rights and the public good. The explicit intention of U.S. patent law, however, was “to benefit the inventor, in the belief that maximizing individual welfare leads to maximum social welfare.”

PDF page 38: Patent litigation, of course, has always been an integral feature of the U.S. patent system. The first patent case on record was that of Benjamin Folger, whose patent for the production of candles was invalidated by the district federal court for New York in 1792. This was merely the first of many hundreds (and eventually thousands) of cases in which patent litigation served the important function of settling either the validity or the disputed ownership of the rights to critical new technologies—the litigation between telephone inventors Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray being perhaps the most famous case in point. By doing so, the courts provided greater certainty regarding the value of such rights to entrepreneurs and investors alike. Today, some critics contend that an “explosion of patent litigation” unlike any in history is harming business and diverting resources better spent on innovation. No responsible observer would deny that the courts have seen an increase in patent infringement suits in recent years, just as they have seen a rise in personal injury claims and product liability suits. But that said, the evidence shows that the rate of patent litigation today is actually below historical norms.

PDF page 38: Patent litigation, of course, has always been an integral feature of the U.S. patent system. The first patent case on record was that of Benjamin Folger, whose patent for the production of candles was invalidated by the district federal court for New York in 1792. This was merely the first of many hundreds (and eventually thousands) of cases in which patent litigation served the important function of settling either the validity or the disputed ownership of the rights to critical new technologies—the litigation between telephone inventors Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray being perhaps the most famous case in point. By doing so, the courts provided greater certainty regarding the value of such rights to entrepreneurs and investors alike. Today, some critics contend that an “explosion of patent litigation” unlike any in history is harming business and diverting resources better spent on innovation. No responsible observer would deny that the courts have seen an increase in patent infringement suits in recent years, just as they have seen a rise in personal injury claims and product liability suits. But that said, the evidence shows that the rate of patent litigation today is actually below historical norms.

PDF page 38: According to USCourts.gov (https://www.USCourts.gov) figures, the number of patent infringement suits filed in the United States increased 59 percent between 2001 and 2011—from 2,520 cases in 2001 to 4,015 cases in

PDF page 39: Statistics from USCourts.gov (https://www.USCourts.gov) show an even sharper rise in the number of patent suits filed in 2012, to 5,189 cases. But analysts attribute most of this increase to the anti-joinder provisions of the Patent Act of 2011, which curtailed the practice of naming multiple defendants in a single infringement suit. According to Carla Rydholm of the patent analytics firm Lex Machina, “Plaintiffs must [now] meet more stringent requirements to file a case against multiple defendants. So instead of Plaintiff X filing one case naming 20 defendants, Plaintiff X might file 20 lawsuits (one per defendant) each with unique civil action numbers.”

PDF page 39: When looked at over the longer term, however, it turns out that 96 percent of all the increase in patent infringement suits since 1991 can be explained by a corresponding increase in patents granted, reports the

PDF page 39: In case you’re wondering if the increase in patents granted is itself a sign of a patent system being increasingly gamed by speculators wanting to cash in on the new “patent gold rush,” note that the average number of patents issued per billion dollars of GDP has remained at or below the same level—13 patents per

PDF page 39: billion dollars of GDP—since 1963.

PDF page 39: Interestingly, although the number of suits filed has increased in rough correlation to patent grants, the number that actually go to trial has remained fairly constant over the last 30 years. About 90 percent of the suits filed each year are abandoned or settled. Of the three hundred that remain, two-thirds never go to trial, and are adjudicated on summary judgment (of noninfringement in most cases).