A History of American Patents: Civilian Patents

The patent law of the United States itself is a groundbreaking creation and an innovative revolution, which has liberated the innovation potential of the American public and made the United States the locomotive of the world economy in a short period of one hundred years.

1. Patent rights of civilians

The patent system has a history of more than 200 years in the United States. It is part of the American dream and goes deep into the foundation of American life. Throughout the United States patent system is the respect and protection of inventors. In the history of the United States, the purchase, sale and exercise of patents have been the foundation of the success of the US economy.

The patent system has a long history and originated from the guild activities in the Middle Ages. In times of financial difficulty, the King of England would grant patents on specific goods in specific industries and charge high "royalties" to raise revenue. The Monopoly Act of 1624 abolished the general patent rights granted by the king, but retained the special patent rights granted to inventors, thus evolving the modern patent system. This British patent licensing retained many features of royal prerogative, a state that continued into the 19th century. Under this mechanism, the patent is regarded as a favor of the king, and the applicant must obtain the support of a series of different officials, and then the king signs it. The whole process is not transparent and the application fee is very high. Another disadvantage of the British patent system is that it restricts the society from obtaining patent specifications before the patent expires, and does not pay attention to whether the patent applicant is an inventor. The United Kingdom and most other European countries often granted patents to people who imported technology in the 19th century. This makes the relationship between patents and innovation not direct, and cannot play an innovation-driven role. More importantly, in the UK at that time, inventors had to make their own patented products before they could obtain patents. As a result, only rich people could obtain patents.

Before the independence of the United States, the British king enjoyed all the intellectual property rights created by the American colonies, and the innovation of the Americans was not guaranteed by the system. The founding fathers of the United States recognized that for the United States to become the land of opportunity, every American must be able to obtain, license, and sell patents, regardless of their wealth and status, in order to promote American innovation and change the international division of labor that is unfavorable to the United States. pattern.

At the time of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the United States was a backward agricultural economy with no active domestic industry and almost entirely dependent on imports of industrial products. According to economic historians, the standard of living in the United States at that time was not only not comparable to that of Europe, but even lower than that of almost all South American countries. While creating a democratic management mechanism, the founding fathers were also faced with the important task of liberating the potential creativity of American citizens and promoting the development of productive forces to counter the economic blockade of the former suzerain, Britain. In 1787, Jefferson stated in a letter to his daughter that because the United States was deprived of the right to import technology from Britain, it must be self-reliant. "We have the responsibility to invent and implement manufacturing, find a way for ourselves, and not rely on others."

The founding fathers studied the more advanced British patent system at the time. They learned that British patent fees were 11 times the average annual income of ordinary British citizens, and patentees were required to implement their own patents-to make products based on their own inventions. High patent fees and enforcement requirements limit innovation in the UK, and only a few wealthy people with factories or the ability to build them can obtain patents. The working class is excluded from innovative activities. Ironically, this flaw is also seen by the British Parliament as an advantage of the British patent system. High tariffs and implementation require that innovation activities be directed to capital-intensive industries, rather than new industries of disruptive innovation, which will cause great economic development.

The founding fathers of the United States believed that the British patent structure did not work for the United States, and that all the assets of the United States except natural resources were enterprising and enterprising citizens. Unlike the sharecroppers and workers who were the main components of Britain's rigid class society, most Americans were freemen with small farms, merchants, shopkeepers, craftsmen and engineering mechanics, the pioneers of what is now called the middle class. They generally have the "American dream" and are full of ambitions to fight for the upper society. In order to quickly develop and create a new American economy, the founding fathers consciously tried to design a patent system different from that of the British, so as to stimulate the innovative talent and entrepreneurial potential of ordinary people. In short, what they have to do is to strive to expand the ranks of innovators and attract as many people as possible to participate in innovative activities, including innovative proletarians who do not have the money to commercialize their inventions.

Article 1, Section 8, Item 8 of the Constitution of the United States in 1789 stipulates: "Promote the progress of science and practical technology, and give authors and inventors the exclusive right to their works or inventions for a limited time." Thus established the legislative basis of the patent system. In 1790, the first U.S. patent law, the Promotion of Practical Technical Progress Act, was signed into law by President Washington. The bill establishes standards for the granting of patents that are "sufficiently practical and sufficiently important", while providing for the examination and granting of patents by a panel of the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Army in charge of Defense and Supreme Court judges.

The new patent system is very different from the British patent system. First, the US patent system establishes a patent fee that the average citizen can afford, only 5% of the UK patent fee, to ensure that any inventor has the financial resources to apply for a patent. Second, the new patent system does not add enforcement requirements to the patentee. To incentivize innovators to produce new technologies, U.S. patent law requires applicants to be the first and true inventor. Third, in order to share innovation, the law stipulates that the specification of the patent is made public at the time of authorization, so as to speed up the diffusion of technical knowledge. Fourth, the law clearly stipulates the licensing and sale of patent rights, creating the world's first licensing industry for new technologies and the first patent trading market.

The patent law of the United States strengthens the innovation efficiency of the patent system and greatly promotes the innovation activities and the process of technology commercialization in the United States. Encouraged by low application costs and a relatively fast and advanced exercise mechanism, American inventors have been enthusiastic about patents from the beginning. By 1810, the per capita patent holdings of the United States exceeded that of the United Kingdom, and the innovation activities of the United States entered a virtuous circle, which lasted throughout the 19th century.

Thirteen years after the U.S. patent law was enacted, Jefferson concluded: Patent law has promoted innovation more than I could have imagined.

At that time, hundreds of inventors in Britain came from the privileged class, and most of the tens of thousands of inventors in the United States were born poor. They were farmers, workers, merchants, mechanics and handicraftsmen. Of the more than 160 great inventors in the United States in the early 19th century, more than 70% received only elementary or secondary education, and half received no or very little formal schooling. The famous in the history of American innovation, such as Matthias Baldwin (locomotive), George Eastman (photographic film), Elias Howe (sewing machine), Edison and so on, were all forced to leave school to support their families at a very young age. It can be seen that the innovation of Britain is the innovation of the aristocracy or the rich, and the innovation of the United States is the real "mass innovation".

The overall design of the United States patent law has made thousands of proletarians with a talent for technological innovation in the United States rich. Invention became a career that could support the family. With the design of American patent law, Edison could have gone from being a poor newsboy to a business owner. The United States quickly became a paradise for small inventors, and more and more citizens found that they could support their families with small inventions that solved some agricultural and industrial problems. Innovation and enrichment is an important part of the American dream, and there is a direct relationship between glory and dreams and innovation.

The per capita rate of patent applications in the United States, the rate at which citizens become inventors, has soared. By the time of the Civil War (1861-1865), the per capita patent application rate in the United States had reached three times that of Britain, and each patentee was more productive than his British counterpart. By 1885, the per capita patent application rate in the United States was four times that of the United Kingdom, and about 85% of these patents could be licensed and converted into goods.

It can be said that the construction of the patent mechanism in the United States is a voluntary institutional innovation and institutional revolution of the founding fathers of the United States. Their efforts produced the first modern patent system in human history. The Founding Fathers knew that this egalitarianism would create a system of innovation the world had never seen before, and 200 years of founding proved them right.

In the 1870 s, the United States, as an economic power, was rising from the Western Hemisphere, creating a miracle of development as a powerful country. By the 1880 s, the U.S. economy had ranked first in the world. In the process of this economic leap, the patent-led innovation mechanism has played a huge role. The United States became the first innovation-driven economy in human history.