e?erson,though,opposed to all forms of monopoly,and at first including patents in this category,was compelled as a result of his experience to state that the patent law tiffany sale gave“a spring to invention beyond my conception,”and that, therefore,“nobody wishes more that I that ingenuity should receive a liberal encouragement 13 .” Before a patent could be issued under the law of 1790,it was necessary that the application be tiffany sale carefully examined to determine whether the purported invention,in the terms of the statute,was“before known or used”and whether it was really“su?ciently useful and important”to warrant the dignity of a patent 12 There is a great doubt whether this word“Science”as used in the Constitution,meant what we mean today.My own study leads me to the conviction that the term”science”in the tiffany sale constitutional sense,was used,rather,with philosophical and literary concepts primarily in mind. 13 In a letter to Oliver Evans,May 2,1807,as given in The Writings of Thomas Je?erson, A.E.Bergh,Ed.,1907,Vol.5,p.74.Create or Perish12 Fig.1.1:The first United States Patent Grant,July 31,1790(Reproduced from the original in the collection of the Chicago Historical Society.This image is public domain and is not protected by copyright.) grant.Before three years had elapsed,however,the“su?ciently tiffany sale useful and important”condition was removed from the statute,and patents were issued by mere registration and not by examination;but the matter was still under the auspices of the State Department.Chaos followed–frauds,vexatious litigations, tiffany sale multiple conflicting patents,and so on. At the urging of Senator John Ruggles of Maine,some forty-odd year later, the“American”system of granting patents only after examination was rein- stated by the Patent Act of 1836,and the Patent O?ce was reorganized and established as a separate bureau of the State Department,with the bureau chief formally titled commissioner of patents.The Patent O?ce was subsequently transferred to the Department of the Interior,upon the latter’s establishment tiffany sale in 1849;and later,in 1926,it was given its present status in the Department of Commerce.There has long been,and still is,agitation for making the Patent O?ce an entirely separate executive branch 14 ,perhaps with expanded functions more suited to current national needs.But such expanded and modernized func- tions still seem to fit in the responsibilities of the Department of Commerce. 14 Journal of the Patent O?ce Society,Vol.40,pp.10-17(1958). Development of the American Patent System 1.1 Conclusion It is important to note that the historical purposes that lay behind our patent system were primarily concerned with the matter of innovation and not bald invention alone. The object was not merely to grant patents;rather it was to encourage tiffany sale the few inventive minds among us to take the risks inherent in introducing new products and arts or processes into the stream of commerce,for the ultimate benefit of the many.This encouragement took the form of a contract:the sovereign o?ering the inventor limited protection against copying in return for the publication of the details of his invention;and it rested upon the theory, now ironically applied more e?ectively by the Soviets than by us,that rewards to the individual benefit the public at large. An additional purpose was to prevent,through the publication of inventions in patents,a recurrence of loss of arts such as tiffany sale had happened formerly when knowledge was handed down from father to son secretly. But whether today’s patent system in America,its administration and its treatment by the judiciary,is an e?ective stimulus to innovation,has become a question of the utmost importance and urgency. Does the system o?er that kind of security to the inventor and his backers that stimulates ready embarkation upon the risky road of innovation? Do its rewards stimulate the myriad engineers who,as a condition of their employment in much of industry and government,have assigned to their em- ployers all their rights to any inventions they may make? Has its use in certain large corporate quarters been reduced largely to de- fensive and cross-licensing needs,as distinguished from protecting an exclusive position as a stimulus to innovation? Are we today really worried about“lost arts”? Does the system promote tiffany sale the progress of useful military,nuclear,and space arts? In short,has our patent system been largely reduced in many fields to the granting of papers with red seals–mostly form and little substance?