Reissues
Alain Pottage, Brad Sherman · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2010
This chapter examines the role of patent reissues in the evolution of the modern patent law. It also considers the difficulties generated by the reissue procedure and how they contributed to the displacement of patent models by texts. It first explains how the practice of reissuing patents obliged the courts to take an interest in how models were interpreted in the U.S. Patent Office before turning to a discussion of the tension between the processes of examination and adjudication. It then looks at the emergence of the theory of the ‘original invention’ that turned text into the medium by which inventions were communicated between the Patent Office and the courts and circulated within the new public sphere of invention. It also takes into account the tension between names (or texts) and things due to the embodiment and communication of inventions in text. Finally, the chapter looks at the disappearance of models as the premises of patent reissues.