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The Formal Structure Of Patent Law And The Limits Of Enablement, Jeffrey A. Lefstin

Jeffrey A Lefstin

Modern American patent law is characterized by two grand themes, both of which were first sounded in the formative years of patent law but have assumed center stage today. The first has been the condensation of the invention and the inventor’s legal rights around the claim, a highly formal and abstract collection of properties defining the boundaries of the patent’s reach. The second has been the drive to reduce patent law to a small set of formal principles, from which the essential doctrines of patent law may be logically derived. This Article argues that those two themes are fundamentally incompatible, …