REPORT OF THE PATENT COMMITTEE 3 



scope of a patent should be settled once and for all at the earliest possible 

 date in the life of the patent, for, as a practical matter, seventeen years 

 (the term of a patent) is a comparatively short time in which to reduce 

 the invention to a thoroughly commercial form, to prepare for its man- 

 ufacture, and to introduce it upon the market, and it is usually neces- 

 sary to determine the validity and scope of the patent in order to de- 

 termine the amount of money which it is safe to invest in exploiting the 

 invention. As things are now, whichever party succeeds in the first 

 suit that is tried on the patent, the other party is very likely to feel that 

 in a second trial before another court he might have better luck. He, 

 therefore, is inclined to insist upon a second litigation. Meantime, he 

 advertises that the questions involved were not settled in the first case. 

 This means uncertainty on the part of the owners of the patent as to 

 their rights and uncertainty on the part of the public as to its rights to 

 use the invention or to determine what it must avoid in working in the 

 same field, a really intolerable situation. 



Moreover, we shall never have a uniform and definite patent law, con- 

 sistently applied, until we have a single Court of Patent Appeals inde- 

 pendent of local sentiment, realizing a responsibility to fix the principles 

 of the law and enforcing an harmonious application of these principles 

 on the lower courts. It would be of the utmost value to those in the 

 United States who are engaged in industry if the present confused con- 

 dition could be corrected and a single tribunal devote itself to crystal- 

 lizing the fundamentals of the patent law and to educating the courts 

 throughout the land to uniformity in applying these principles in special 

 cases. 



Attached hereto is a copy of a bill for the establishment of such a 

 Court, which has been advocated for many years by the American Bar 

 Association, and is No. 5011 of the House of Representatives, 65th 

 Congress, 1st session. It provides for a court of seven members, which 

 would sit in Washington, with a Chief Justice appointed for life by the 

 President. The appointment of the Chief Justice for life is in order 

 that there may be an element of continuity in the Court. The other 

 Judges are to be selected by the Chief Justice of the United States 

 Supreme Court from the various District and Circuit Judges throughout 

 the land, and each is to sit on the Court of Patent Appeals for a period 

 of six years, or longer, if reappointed. 



There are many advantages in this plan. Among them are the 

 following: 



The Judges would not be men who were appointed as judges primarily 

 to deal with patent matters. There could be no charge that special 



