Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

Duck, Duck, Bilski: Searching For A Law-Progress Equipoise, Eric Golas Salbert

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

Moore's Law generally asserts that the transistor capacity on a computer processing unit increases exponentially over time. To exemplify, in 1971, Intel's first microprocessor contained 2,300 transistors and was used in simple electronic pocket calculators and by 2007 Intel was manufacturing microprocessors containing 820,000,000 transistors used in personal computers capable of near-instantaneous worldwide communication over the Internet. When the framers of the Constitution drafted the empowering words, “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts,” could they foresee such a blistering pace of innovation? Have courts been able to maintain the balance between progress and limited monopolies? The history …