ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Commission wishes to record its sincere gratitude for the generous efforts contributed by its staff, and by many individuals and organizations from both government and private life, which have been of inestimable value to the Commission in discharging its responsibilities. vi INTRODUCTION The United States patent system is an institution as old as the Nation itself. Stemming from a Constitutional mandate, patent acts were passed in 1790, 1793, and 1836. The Act of 1836 established the pattern for our present system by providing statutory criteria for the issuance of patents and requiring the Patent Office to examine applications for conformance thereto. Although the law has been amended on numerous occasions and even rewritten twice since 1836-no basic changes have been made in its general character in the succeeding one hundred and thirty years. However, during this period of few statutory changes, major developments have occurred in the social and economic character of the country. The United States has undergone a dramatic transformation, creating and utilizing an enormously complex technology, to emerge as the world's most productive industrial community. In the agricultural economy of 1836, individuals who engaged in inventive activity usually did so alone, and on their own initiative. Such activity still continues. The lone, independent inventor, even in this day of sophisticated technology, still contributes most importantly to the useful arts. But the field is no longer his alone. Organized research is carrying a steadily increasing share of the task of exploration. Research and development are now commanding a scale of expenditure which is possible only because of the application of the resources of government, private industry and institutions of learning. Scientific and technical information is being generated and made available to the public in an ever growing torrent. What 90-355 0-68-pt. 1-3 1 the patent fraternity calls prior art is growing so fast that it is becoming almost unmanageable by conventional means of storage and retrieval. Disclosures are becoming increasingly complex, and many are in foreign languages. The trend in the number of patent applications is clearly upward and their subject matter is increasing in sophistication and complexity. The current backlog of pending applications is over 200,000, the average period of pendency being two and onehalf years from filing to final disposition. However, a substantial number of applications have a period of pendency of five to ten years or more. All of these factors have cooperated to make it exceedingly difficult for the patent examiner to screen what is truly novel and what is truly inventive. Agreeing that the patent system has in the past performed well its Constitutional mandate "to promote the progress of useful arts," the Commission asked itself: What is the basic worth of a patent system in the context of present day conditions? The members of the Commission unanimously agreed that a patent system today is capable of continuing to provide an incentive to research, development, and innovation. They have discovered no practical substitute for the unique service it renders. First, a patent system provides an incentive to invent by offering the possibility of reward to the inventor and to those who support him. This prospect encourages the expenditure of time and private risk capital in research and development efforts. Second, and complementary to the first, a patent system stimulates the investment of additional capital needed for the further development and marketing of the invention. In return, the patent owner is given the right, for a limited period, to exclude others from making, using, or selling the invented product or process. |