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Page Number: 29

8 

OIL STATES ENERGY SERVICES, LLC v. GREENE’S 
ENERGY GROUP, LLC 
GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

whatever they do, these cases do not come close to proving 
that  patent  disputes  were  routinely  permitted  to  proceed 
outside a court of law. 
  Any  lingering  doubt  about  English  law  is  resolved  for 
me by looking to our own.  While the Court is correct that 
the Constitution’s Patent Clause “ ‘was written against the 
backdrop’ ”  of  English  practice,  ante,  at  14  (quoting  Gra-
ham  v.  John  Deere  Co.  of  Kansas  City,  383  U. S.  1,  5 
(1966)), it’s also true that the Clause sought to reject some 
of  early  English  practice.    Reflecting  the  growing  senti-
ment  that  patents  shouldn’t  be  used  for  anticompetitive 
monopolies  over  “goods  or  businesses  which  had  long 
before  been enjoyed  by the  public,”  the framers wrote  the 
Clause  to  protect  only  procompetitive  invention  patents 
that are the product of hard work and insight and “add to 
the sum of useful knowledge.”  Id., at 5–6.  In light of the 
Patent  Clause’s  restrictions  on  this  score,  courts  took  the 
view  that  when  the  federal  government  “grants  a  patent 
the grantee is entitled to it as a matter of right, and does 
not receive it, as was originally supposed to be the case in 
England, as a matter of grace and favor.”  James v. Camp-
bell, 104 U. S. 356, 358 (1882) (emphasis added).  As Chief 
Justice  Marshall  explained,  courts  treated  American 
invention  patents  as  recognizing  an  “inchoate  property” 
that  exists  “from  the  moment  of  invention.”    Evans  v. 
Jordan,  8  F.  Cas.  872,  873  (No.  4,564)  (CC  Va.  1813).  
American  patent  holders  thus  were  thought  to  “hol[d]  a 
property  in  [their]  invention[s]  by  as  good  a  title  as  the 
farmer  holds  his  farm  and  flock.”    Hovey  v.  Henry,  12  F. 
Cas. 603, 604 (No. 6,742) (CC Mass. 1846) (Woodbury, J.).  
And  just  as  with  farm  and  flock,  it  was  widely  accepted 
that  the  government  could  divest  patent  owners  of  their 
rights only through proceedings before independent judges. 
  This view held firm for most of our history.  In fact, from 
the  time  it  established  the  American  patent  system  in 
1790 until about 1980, Congress left the job of invalidating