Law Commons^™

Mr. Nicolson's Cane, Mark D. Janis

Articles by Maurer Faculty

One of the most widely-recognized artifacts in American patent law iconography is also among its most peculiar: Samuel Nicolson’s cane. The cane played a leading role in the Court’s analysis in American Nicholson v. City of Elizabeth, a nineteenth-century decision that has become a fixture in the patent law canon. The case is the leading enunciation of the doctrine of experimental use, which spares inventors from forfeiting patent rights when they can show that otherwise disqualifying sales or uses were undertaken as experiments to perfect their inventions. This paper argues that the modern experimental use doctrine needs to rediscover its …