Figures of Invention A History of Modern Patent Law

Author: Alian Pottage; Brad Sherman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199595631
Published In: November 2010
Format: Hardback
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Disclaimer:
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An extended historical and conceptual exploration of the invention in modern patent law
Presents an entirely novel and innovative approach to the analysis of patent law, in a manner not found in traditional commentaries
Written by two leading academics with significant experience
Provides a strong theoretical framework and true insight facilitating an enlightened view of modern patent law

Taking the invention as its object of study, this book develops a radical new perspective on the making of modern patent law. It develops an extended historical and conceptual exploration of the invention in modern patent law. Focussing primarily on the figures that make inventions material, and on how to overcome the intangibility of ideas, this intellectual challenging book makes explicit a dimension of patent law that is not commonly found in traditional commentaries, treatises and cases.

The story is told from the perspective of the material media in which the intangible form of the invention is made visible; namely, models, texts, drawings, and biological specimens. This approach brings to light for the first time some essential formative moments in the history of patent law. For example, Figures of Invention describes the central role that scale models played in the making of nineteenth-century patent jurisprudence, the largely mythical character of the nineteenth-century theory that patents texts should function as a means of disclosing inventions, and the profound conceptual changes that emerged from debates as to how to represent and disclose the first biological inventions. At the same time, this historical inquiry also reveals the basic conceptual architecture of modern patent law. The story of how inventions were represented is also the story of the formation of the modern concept of invention, or of the historical processes that shaped the terms in which patent lawyers still apprehend the intangible form of the invention.

Although the analysis focuses on the history of patent law in the United States, it develops themes that illuminate the evolution of patent regimes in Europe. In combining close historical analysis with broad thematic reflection, Figures of Inventionmakes a distinctive contribution both to the field of patent law scholarship and to emerging interdisciplinary debates about the constitution of patent law and of intellectual property in general.

Readership: The primary market is scholars and post-graduate students primarily in the field of intellectual property, but also in the fields of legal theory, economic and legal history, anthropology and philosophy. Whilst the examples are drawn from US case law, the arguments are applicable in other jurisdictions, including the UK and Europe.

1: Introduction

2: Industrial copies

3: Recollection and possession

4: The principle of a machine

5: Mechanical jurisprudence

6: Reissues

7: Textual machines

8: Organisms as manufactures

9: Bio-legal hybrids;

Alain Pottage, Reader in Law, London School of Economics, and Brad Sherman, Professor of Law, Griffith University, Brisbane

Alain Pottage is Reader in Law at the London School of Economics. He holds degrees from the University of Edinburgh and the London School of Economics. Before joining the Law Department of the LSE, he was a researcher at the Law Commission and a lecturer in the School of Law at King's College London. He has been a visiting professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Paris, the University of Sydney, and Cornell Law School.

Brad Sherman is Professor of Law at Griffith University, Brisbane , and Director, Australian Centre for Intellectual Property in Agriculture.