Posts Tagged: "henry knox"

First U.S. Patent Laws Were First to File, Not First to Invent

The reality is that from 1790 to 1836 patents were given to the first to file. Between 1836 and 1870 a panel of arbitrators would decide disputes between conflicting patents and patent applications, but were not required to grant the patent to the first and true inventor. Moreover, even with the passage of the Patent Act of 1870, the first act that specifically and unambiguously gives the Patent Office the authority to grant a patent to one who is not the first to file, the power to grant to the first to invent is conditional, not mandatory. This permissive language persists through the Patent Act of 1939, and ultimately into the regime we have today, which was ushered in by the 1952 Patent Act.