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Timestamp: 2019-04-23 22:58:18+00:00

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Suppose for a moment that you are a comparatist, steeped in two legal traditions: the common law of England and the civilian tradition of Continental Europe. You are asked to study a body of law which, unlike common law, did not develop on a case-by-case basis, with stare decisis as its center of gravity, but rather as a patchwork quilt of statutes, each having been enacted by a small state sharing a common language and culture with small neighboring states. Thus, the gradualist, inductive method of the common law, with its great respect for judicial precedent was hardly in evidence during the early days of the development of this field of law. Moreover, fundamental public policy issues and balancing of public policy and private rights were confronted head-on during this development; public policy was not some interstitial factor, filling the gaps between precedent, but a major focus of the development. At some point, the relatively small states were welded into one large nation, and the patchwork quilt of laws was swept away with a single, comprehensive code. The drafters of the code were not writing on a blank slate, however. They drew upon their legal traditions and from the statutory experimentation that had preceded their efforts, including a statute which they regarded as the real pioneering effort in this field, a statute which had been drafted in a different country altogether.
*Connoly, Bove, Ledge & Hutz, Wilmington, Delaware.
1. F. Deak and M. Rheinstein, “The Development of French and German Law”, 24 Geo. L.J. 551 (1936).
But the intent here was not to describe the history of the German Civil Code, but rather the history of the Patent Act of 1790,  passed in the second session of the First Congress of the United States of America by legislators steeped in the common law tradition. Although the First Congress met more than three centuries after the world's first patent statute had been enacted,  the 1790 Act was probably the most comprehensive attempt at patent law codification that had been seen up to that date.
The point of this little diversion was to illustrate as emphatically as possible that - from the standpoint of what could be called the common law mentality and the civilian mentality - the origins and in some respects the early practice and development of patent law were the product of neither of these ways of thinking, and even today, as in the First Congress, the substantive patent laws of major industrialized countries maintain at least some degree of independence from these ways of thinking. Even English patent practice did not grow smoothly out of an English common law of patents but arose initially outside of the English court system, and a very early legislative intervention  was needed to keep this practice from being drowned in an ocean of royal abuse.
2. Act of April 10, 1790, c. 7, 1 Stat. 109.
3. The identification of the exact beginnings of the granting of some form of privilege to inventors is a debatable subject; it has been suggested that the first patent law in history might date back to 600 B.C., in the Republic of Sibari, in southern Italy, but it would be reasonable to disregard isolated legal experiments of this sort, if they indeed existed, since they made no traceable contribution to the history of patent law as we know it today. Forman, H.I., “Two Hundred Years of American Patent Law”, in TWO HUNDRED YEARS OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN PATENT, TRADEMARK AND COPYRIGHT LAW, American Bar Center, Chicago, 21-34, at 24 (1977); by contrast, the impact of fifteenth century Venetian patent law and practice on the history of patent law has been studied by several authors and is well-recognized, hence the first patent statute is usually considered to be the one was enacted in the Republic of Venice in 1474; G. Mandich, Venetian Patents (1450-1550), 30 J.P.O.S. 166 (1948) (translated by F.D. Prager). Other examples of relatively early patent statutes include the Statute of Monopolies, 21 Jac. 1, Ch. 3, §§5 and 6, and a statute passed in France in 1699, the text of which is set forth in E.C. Walterscheid, “The Early Evolution of the United States Patent Law: Antecedents (Part 1)”, 76 J.P.T.O.S. 697, 712 (1994).
4. 21 Jac. 1, Ch. 3, best known to patent attorneys by its short title, the Statute of Monopolies.
almost entirely outside of “law” (even in the broadest civilian sense of ius or Recht or droit); this practice seems to have grown directly out of the nationalistic economic policymaking of the governments of emerging European nation-states. Patent practice eventually evolved into a body of “law”, both in the broad sense of ius and the narrow sense of Gesetz or loi, but when history takes us back toward the roots of patent law, we find ourselves entangled in mercantilist economic theory, not the ingenious, case-by-case development of common law or the bold draftsmanship of the civilian codifier. Today, more than two centuries after the burial of mercantilism under a mountain of scholarly criticism, we cannot ignore the connection between patent law and economic policy issues and other public policy issues,  and it is suggested that comparative studies should be sensitive to the historical development of these issues.
Is patent law, because of its unique origins, a field that comparatists can safely set aside as too anomalous, too atypical to be worthy of careful study? One might get that impression when surveying the holdings of some American law libraries in the field of comparative patent law. But fortunately, some comparatists have concluded that intellectual property law in general and patent law in particular are especially fertile and important fields for comparative studies. In Europe, pioneering work has been done by the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Patent, Copyright, and Competition Law in Munich, Germany. In the United States, the Center for Advanced Study and Research on Intellectual Property at the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle, Washington is very active in the field of comparative patent law studies,  and one would hope that this trend will expand as well as continue.
5. See generally, Hilton Davis Chemical Co. v. Warner-Jenkinson Company, Inc., 62 F.3d 1512, 1519-1536 (Fed. Cir. 1995), concurring opinion of NEWMAN, Circuit Judge.
6. See, for example, the Ph.D. dissertation of Toshiko Takenaka, University of Washington, “Comparative Study of Patent Claim Interpretation in the United States, Germany, and Japan” (1992).
islators operating under different legal systems. In any event, each such approach has its own unique history.
To explain the basis for these proposed answers, we begin by reviewing the nature of the thinking that went into the two great legal traditions referred to above, common law and civilian law.
There are vast regions of the world where national legal systems have been heavily influenced by either the civil codes of Continental Europe or by some form of common law directly or ultimately traceable to the common law of England - or by both of these legal traditions. These regions extend all around the globe and include, for example, the North and South American continents and a large number of Asian countries. Japan's Civil Code attained its final form in 1896, in parallel with the German Civil Code, and the pre-Communist Chinese Civil Code was influenced by several European civil codes, including the Swiss Civil Code and the Franco-Italian Code of Obligations and Contracts of 1927.  The Japanese Civil Code was partially revised during the period of American occupation after World War II, and American legal influence was pervasive during that period.  The Hindu law of India has been influenced by the common law and by principles of equity as well.  The Philippine legal system is a complicated blend of common law and civilian law,  and many more such examples could be cited. Given this extensive world-wide development of influences and cross-influences, it is risky - perhaps even folly - to try to formulate a simply-stated, comprehensive test for what constitutes either the common law or the civilian mentality. But since a major point of this discussion is to characterize the uniqueness of the legal thinking which created and developed patent law - uniqueness vis-a-vis both common law and civilian law mentality - some sort of generalizations must be attempted.
7. R. Pound, “The Chinese Civil Code in Action”, 29 Tulane L. Rev. 277, 279 (1955).
8. A.C. Oppler, “The Reform of Japan's Legal and Judicial System Under Allied Occupation”, 24 Wash. L. Rev. 290, 317-324 (1949).
9. A. Gledhill, “The Influence of Common Law and Equity on Hindu Law Since 1800”, 3 Int. & Comp. L.Q. 576, 603 (1954).
10. See, for example, In re Shoop, 41 Phil. 213 (Supreme Court of the Philippine Islands, 1920).
11. A.R. Hogue, ORIGINS OF THE COMMON LAW, 5, 186-190 (Liberty Press, Indianapolis 1966).
13. Laws (New York), 1920, ch. 925; the Act became effective on October I, 1921.
14. New York Civil Practice Act of 1920, §64. The Civil Practice Act was superseded by the New York Civil Practice Law and Rules, Laws 1962, ch. 308, and this 1962 law was amended on March 8, 1990, but the light of the past still burns brightly; the definition of jurisdiction in the Civil Practice Law and Rules, §301, now reads as follows: “A court may exercise such jurisdiction over persons, property, or status as might have been exercised heretofore” [emphasis added].
15. Deak and Rheinstein, op. cit., at 555- 559.
16. H.C. Gutteridge, COMPARATIVE LAW, 2nd Ed., 75 (Cambridge University Press, 1949).
17. Deak and Rheinstein, op. cit., at 553-554.
19. R.B. Schlesinger, COMPARATIVE LAW, 2nd Ed., at 183 (Brooklyn, The Foundation Press, Inc., 1959).
20. Gutteridge, op. cit., at 77.
21. See supra, note 15.
From the day when these laws [constituting the Code] become effective, the Roman laws, the ordinances, the general and local customs, the charters and the regulations all cease to have the force either of general or of special law concerning the subjects covered by the present code (emphasis added).
22. Schlesinger, op. cit., at 182.
23. Because of this watershed effect, see generally Deak and Rheinstein, op. cit., and because new rules of law were contemplated by the codifiers, “[t]he history a rule of continental law is… not a matter of very great importance save in exceptional cases.” Gutteridge, op. cit., 77.
24.  A.C. 107, 60 L.J. 2 B 145, 64 L.T. 353, 55 J.P. 676, 39 W.R. 657, 7 T.L.R. 333.
25 Chalmers, BILLS OF EXCHANGE, 8th Ed., XLI.
To summarize the proposed test for a common law vs. a civilian approach: common law systems tend to prefer codifications which are relatively unoriginal and non-comprehensive or even merely additive, while civil law systems tend to prefer exactly the opposite: original, forward-looking, comprehensive enactments which supplant rather than supplement entire bodies of pre-existing law.
26. 5 & 6 Will. 4, c. 83.
27. 15 & 16 Vict., c. 83.
28. 46 & 47 Vict., c. 57.
29. 2 Edw. 7, c. 34.
30. 7 Edw. 7, c. 29.
31. E. Armitage, “Two Hundred Years of English Patent Law” in TWO HUNDRED YEARS OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN PATENT, TRADEMARK AND COPYRIGHT LAW, 3-20, at 5-9 (American Bar Center, Chicago 1977).
32. Walterscheid, 76 J.P.T.O.S. at 708; see also Forman, op. cit., at 24.
33. Walterscheid, 76 J.P.T.O.S. at 704-708. The term “patent custom” was coined by F.D. Prager, “Historic Background and Foundation of American Patent Law”, 5 Am.J.Leg.Hist. 309, 310-311 (1961) and is discussed by Walterscheid in 76 J.P.T.O.S. at 698, f.n. 8.
was forward-looking and sufficiently creative and original to represent a significant (if not revolutionary) departure from the existing body of law or custom.
34. Walterscheid, 76 J.P.T.O.S. at 705-707 and 711 to 715.
35. Walterscheid, 76 J.P.T.O.S. at 711.
36. Walterscheid, 76 J.P.T.O.S. at 712-713.
37. E.C. Walterscheid, “The Early Evolution of the United States Patent Law: Antecedents (Part 2)”, 76 J.P.T.O.S. 849, at 858-859 (1994).
scrutiny of the English court system, an important step in the transformation of the English patent custom into English patent law.
Thus, the analogies that might be drawn between modern civilian codification concepts and fifteenth century Venetian patent law, however reasonable they might appear, are purely academic. The Venetian statute did not become a model for widespread adoption as the French, Austrian, and German Civil Codes did centuries later; it was only the patent custom which became the model, and no reasonable analogy can be drawn between the patent customs of the sixteenth century (particularly outside of Italy) and modern civilian concepts. And a common law of patents in England was not even a possibility until Queen Elizabeth I opened the door to English patent litigation at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
Queen Elizabeth's agreement to let the English court system enter into the field of patents  did not, however, put an end to abuses of the sovereign's power to grant patents. Elizabeth's successor, James I, continued the policy of permitting patent litigation which could test the validity of patent grants, but the abuses also continued. After two decades of abuse and an increasing outcry against “odious monopolies”, Parliament intervened with legislation. The result, in 1623-1624 (King James' twenty-first regnal year) was the Statute of Monopolies.  Sections 5 and 6 of that famous Statute, which apply to patents of invention, have been variously characterized as nothing more than a codification of the existing common law of patents (which had begun to develop in 1602) or as reaching somewhat beyond the existing common law, but if there be anything more in the Statute than codification of existing law the reach is certainly not far. The words of the Statute are sparse, and extensive judicial interpretation was required to breathe life into them.
39. Walterscheid, 76 J.P.T.O.S. at 715.
40. See Darcy v. Allin, 72 Eng. Rep. 830 (Moore 671), 74 Eng. Rep. 1131 (Noy 173), 11 Coke Rep. 86, 1 Abbott's Patent Cases 1 (King's Bench 1602) and the dicta of The Clothworkers of Ipswitch, Godbolt, 252, 1 Abbott's Patent Cases 6, 78 Eng. Rep. 147 (King's Bench 1615).
To American lawyers, this 150-year dearth of important decisions may seem inexplicable, but we can turn for an especially concise explanation to Edward Armitage, a former Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks who began his service to the British Patent Office in 1939.
So: if the patent custom was really the foundation for the origins of both Continental and English patent law, it is reasonable to say that the effects of common law or civilian thinking upon it would have to wait for a later time, whereas - as we shall see - the effects of nationalistic economic policymaking were immediate and fundamental.
42. Edgeberry v. Stephens, Abbott's Patent Cases 8 (1691).
43. E.C. Walterscheid, “The Early Evolution of United States Patent Law: Antecedents (Part 3)”, 77 J.P.T.O.S. 771, at 771-776 (1995); Armitage, op. cit., at 5.
44. Armitage, op. cit., at 5.
45. Walterscheid, 76 J.P.T.O.S. at 704-705.
46. Walterscheid, 76 J.P.T.O.S. at 706; the Venetian statute is set forth on 708-709.
47. 4 THE CAMBRIDGE ECONOMIC HISTORY OF EUROPE, Editors, E.E. Rich and C.H. Wilson, 515 (Cambridge at the University Press, 1967).
A century or two after the emergence of mercantilism, by which time the economies of important European nations had matured considerably, it may have made far less economic sense to go to excessive lengths to develop a totally new production capability at home, at great expense, when the desired product could simply be purchased at far less expense from a foreign manufacturer. But if that logic had been pursued too vigorously in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the transition of European national economies from a primitive to an advanced stage might well have been held back for lack of the national resolve needed to climb the steep learning curves of the increasingly sophisticated crafts and technologies then emerging outside of any given nation-state.
It should therefore not surprise us that, at least as early as the sixteenth century, a ruler of a European nation-state would believe that the stimulation or importation of new inventions could fit nicely into an overall plan for creating new local industry and promoting national self-sufficiency.
lic policy in favor of invention and innovation. The radical reorganization and growth of industry during the industrial revolution, built in part upon inventions such as Richard Arkwright's spinning machine, which he patented in 1769, and James Watt's discovery of a way to use superatmospheric pressure in steam engines (also patented)  provides some evidence that this strong public policy in favor of invention and innovation, even if conceptualized as a result of faulty economics, was infused with important elements of realism.
Initially, the patent custom led to the creation of new privileges (as opposed to legally-defined rights) for inventors, innovators, and importers of inventions, but the custom started an evolutionary process, still fueled by public policy and economic considerations, which took on more and more legal character. This evolution culminated in the development of a rationale for the creation of private rights which were to provide the practical incentive for contributions to the implementation of the policy.
53. See Walterscheid, 77 J.P.T.O.S. at 850-855. Walterscheid notes the connection between mercantilism and the acquisition of new technology at 855.
54. Walterscheid, 76 J.P.T.O.S. at 711-715.
55. Armitage, op. cit., at 4-5; for Thomas Jefferson's rejection of the natural rights theory, see Graham v. John Deere Co. of Kansas City, 383 U.S. 1,8, f.n. 2 (1966).
56. Walterscheid, 76 J.P.T.O.S. at 699, f.n. 10.
57. Walterscheid, 76 J.P.T.O.S. at 715.
58. Armitage, op. cit., 14-16; 22 & 23 Geo. 5, c. 32; the British Patent Office actually began operations in 1853,33 HALSBURY'S STATUTES OF ENGLAND AND WHALES, 4th Ed., 1 (London, 1993).
59. Armitage, op. cit., at 14-16.
60. Armitage, op. cit., at 5-6.
61. 1 W.P.C. 53; see the discussion and citations in Walterscheid, 77 J.P.T.O.S. at 793-797.
62. Walterscheid, 77 J.P.T.O.S. at 796-797.
63. Armitage, op. cit., at 11.
Upon adoption of the United States Constitution, the U.S. Congress was authorized to create a national patent law.  The First Congress turned its attention to the drafting of the first U.S. Patent Act not long thereafter, and the result was the Act of 1790.  The Act of 1790 was a major milestone in the history of patent law, generally. It established important basic principles of patent law on a national level.
64. Forman, op. cit., at 25-26.
67. U.S. Constitution, Article I, §8, clause 8.
68. Act of April 10, 1790, supra note 2.
70 But see supra note 55. It is interesting that Thomas Jefferson rejected the “natural rights” theory of patent law, since Jefferson used the term “secure” in the Declaration of Independence in much the same sense as the term is used in Article 1, §8, clause 8 of the Constitution; cf. Forman, op. cit., 27-28.
71. Act of April 10, 1790, §2.
76. Id., §§4 to 6.
The Act could be said to be fundamental, comprehensive, basic, and/or bold - anything but timid, incomplete, or housekeeping in nature. Though America's first national patent code was soon to be revised in 1793, one can see in it the framework or model for the nineteenth and twentieth century revisions, including the even more comprehensive and equally famous 1836,  1870,  and 1952  patent codes.
Without reviewing the entire history of colonial patent legislation and administration and the brief but important history of state patent legislation and administration under the Articles of Confederation, it is impossible to estimate with certainty the degree of influence that French legal thinking had upon the drafting of the Act of 1790, but a bit of the bold flavor of civilian draftsmanship seems to be reflected in the words of the Act. Insofar as the delegates to the Constitutional Convention and the First Congress looked to the past, they could not help but find more to guide them in American history (almost 150 years of patent law and practice) than in English history.  This first American patent code represented a fresh start into the field, somewhat analogous to the fresh starts provided by the French and German Civil Codes vis-a-vis the confusing array of laws of pre-Revolutionary France and of the small German states that had an independent status prior to German unification.
78. Armitage, op. cit., at 8-9.
79. Walterscheid, 76 J.P.T.O.S. at 712; see also 698-699, In. 9.
80. Act of July 4, 1836, c. 357, 5 Stat. 117.
81. Act of July 8, 1870, c. 230, 16 Stat. 198.
82. Act of July 19, 1952, c. 950, 66 Stat. 792.
83. See Forman, op. cit., at 25-29.
icy theories and practices which recognized the benefits obtainable from encouraging invention had to play a role also, and these theories and policies were never exclusively English; indeed, as we have seen these policies arose first in the Venetian Republic and then spread rapidly to much of the Continent as well as to England.
84. Tanaka, op. cit., at 442 and cases cited, especially Lajance National de Parorisasion de la Ruchershe v. Funai Yakuhin K.K. (Osaka Hi. Ct., April 27, 1977) 9 MUTAISHU 406.
85. Under pre-1981 German law, if a “general inventive idea” can be gleaned from a patent, the normal range of subject matter which would be recognized as the “subject of the invention” (Gegenstand der Erfindung) can be expanded in scope to provide additional patent protection. Krasser, R. (based on Bernhardt, W.), Lehrbuch des Patentrechts, 4th Ed., C.H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Munich, at 512 (1986); see, for example, Judgment of the Reichsgericht of February 9, 1910, Entscheidungen des Reichsgerichls in Zivilsachen, Vol. 30, No. 13, 54-58 (1913); Alfred F. Crotti, “The Allegemeine Erfindungsgedanke in the German Patent”, 39 J.P.O.S. 477-501 (1957).
86. Graver Tank & Mfg. Co. v. Linde Air Products Co., 339 U.S. 605, 607-609, 85 USPQ 328, 330 (1950); Hilton-Davis Chemical Co. v. Warner-Jenkinson Company, Inc., 62 F.3d 1512, 35 USPQ2d 1641 (Fed. Cir. 1995).
87. See, for example, Mazer v. Stein, 347 U.S. 201, 219, 100 USPQ 325, 333 (1954); James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 43; cf. S.C. Oppenheim, “A New Approach to Evaluation of the American Patent System”, 33 J.P.O.S. 555, 564-565 (1951).
88. Walterscheid, 76 J.P.T.O.S. at 7041-715.
law.  But we have seen that the policy underpinnings of the various national patent laws have been under continuous development for centuries. One of the more recent aspects of this development, common to U.S. and Japanese patent law and Article 69 of the European Patent Convention (which Article is now part of Germany's patent law and has been in effect since 1981 ) embodies the policy of providing a well-defined, legally certain notice to the public of the patentee's rights, reflecting a public policy favoring competition in invention itself in addition to competition in products and services. (When a competitor has a good grasp of the scope of the patentee's rights, it facilitates research and development having the objective of further advancing the technology by “designing around” the patent.)  Both policies, encouragement of invention and stimulation of competition in invention, are laudable and partially reconcilable. But the precise manner in which the two policies are reconciled and applied in any given case can be influenced greatly by prevailing national views of the relative importance of these policies, and hence the varying results of this reconciliation constitute a particularly important and fruitful area for comparative studies.
Five hundred years of legal history have not eliminated or even weakened the close ties between patents and economic policymaking, and these ties now extend to multilateral economic policymaking, as evidenced by the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (resulting from the GATT Uruguay Round). For example, Article 27 of that Agreement seeks to solve a trade-related problem stemming from discrimination in the grant or enforcement of patent rights based on the area of technology, place of invention, or whether the product is imported or locally made. Enactment of U.S. legislation implementing the Agreement  has therefore necessitated, for example, substantial revision of the provisions of 35 U.S. Code § 104, so that inventors carrying out inventive activity outside of the United States will have the same opportunity to prove their date of invention (e.g. for interference purposes) as domestic inventors.
89. Tanaka, op. cit., 7.
90. Patentgesetz (patent law of the Federal Republic of Germany), § 14.
91. State Indust. Inc. v. AO Smith Corp, 751 F.2d 1226, 1236, 224 USPQ 418, 424 (Fed. Cir. 1985); for early American judicial expressions of the public policy of adequate notice to competitors or consumers regarding the scope of the patentee's rights, see Keystone Bridge Co. v. Phoenix Iron Co., 95 US (5 Otto) 274, 278 (1877); Merrill v. Yeomans, 94 US (4 Otto) 568, 573-574 (1876); Evans v. Eaton, 20 US (7 Wheat.) 356, 434-435 (1822).
92. P.L. 103-465, the GATT Uruguay Round-implementing legislation passed by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Clinton on December 8, 1994.
We have seen that civilian lawyers normally give little weight or consideration to the period of “ancient law” (l'ancien droit), the law of civilian jurisdictions prior to the codifications which came in the wake of the French Revolution, whereas common lawyers seem almost spellbound by a legal history that dates back to the twelfth or thirteenth century - a trait which must seem stuffy or excessively academic and impractical to civilian lawyers. In the application of the comparative method to patent law, however, this peculiar trait of common lawyers has practical as well as academic significance. Perhaps the most important role of history in the use of the comparative method is to keep the focus of the comparative study from wandering too far from the concerns of economics and public policy which gave this body of law its first and most enduring surge of vitality.
93. The delineation and application of the doctrine of equivalents is an excellent example; see generally, Hilton Davis, 62 F.3d 1519-1536 (Fed. Cir. 1995).

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