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A Closer Look At The "Eye" Test: The British Influence On Early American Design Patent Infringement Law, Mark D. Janis
A Closer Look At The "Eye" Test: The British Influence On Early American Design Patent Infringement Law, Mark D. Janis
IP Theory
The Supreme Court has asserted that “[t]he Patent Clause in our Constitution ‘was written against the backdrop’ of the English system.” That notion has a long lineage. In 1818, the author of an anonymous “Note on the Patent Laws,” widely assumed to be Justice Story, claimed that “[t]he patent acts of the United States are, in a great degree, founded on the principles and usages which have grown out of the English statute on the same subject.”
But these generalizations significantly overstate—and oversimplify—the influence of British law on the nascent American jurisprudence of patents. Early American jurists felt no reluctance …