Law Commons^™

Making Patents Useful, Sean B. Seymore

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

It is axiomatic in patent law that an invention must be useful. The utility requirement has been a part of the statutory scheme since the Patent Act of 1790. But what does it mean to be useful? The abstract and imprecise nature of the term combined with the lack of objective criteria for assessing it make utility the most malleable patentability requirement. As the invention landscape has evolved over time, the Patent Office and the courts have exploited this malleability to create technologically specific utility standards — de minimis for some inventions, but considerably more stringent for others. This has …