GARRIS, Charles A., Jr.
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, The George Washington University, Phillips Hall 703, Washington, DC 20052, U. S. A., 202-994-3646, FAX: 202-994-0238, garris@seas.gwu.edu
Abstract: The paper lays an historical foundation explaining the role of the patent system in a competitive free-market society, and how it influences the behavior of those who seek to innovate. This paper will argue that future engineers practicing in the free-market environment must have a firm understanding of the patent system and the resources that it offers. It will offer examples of how patent protection offered the incentive to vigorously pursue ideas that resulted in new innovations and provided a competitive edge, and how the lack of patent protection resulted in major litigation with disastrous results for the defendant, even though no malfeasance was intended.
The paper will describe the structure of a U. S. patent and the means for gaining access to the archives through the INTERNET and hardcopy. The utility of the patent literature in understanding the current state-of-the-art will be discussed and its importance as a resource for engineers engaged in design will be emphasized.
The use of the patent literature in a Thermal Systems Design course at the George Washington University will be discussed in detail. Specific details on how the industrial environment is simulated in the classroom, with an eye towards the design of patentable innovations, is explained. A list of patents used in the course for design projects will be provided, and the outcomes of the course will be discussed. .Ethical dilemmas facing engineers in the heat of competition are treated in the course, and the paper discusses some of these. The paper concludes with a discussion of why the role of patents is likely to increase in the Twenty-First century.
”Utopia”1, written in 1516 by Sir Thomas More, acknowledged man’s passion for acquiring wealth but regarded it as a malady of the ego that can only be corrected by a communal society where all wealth is equally distributed among the people. In Utopia, the individual can neither attain wealth nor class. The scholarly culture of universities has long been consistent with this model, particularly with regard to the idea that information and knowledge should be shared and disseminated. The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels similarly subscribed to the equal distribution of wealth among the proletariat. The patent system of the United States and other countries, which confers on an individual the right to exclude others from the use of information and knowledge, is truly the antithesis of the visions of More, Marx, and Engel, among others. Since the concept of patents is philosophically incongruent with that of normal academic scholarship, it has been a subject neglected in the education of engineers, much to their detriment.
The patent system had its origins in a culture quite repugnant to the democratic mentality: the right of Kings to confer privilege on individuals. Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) of England issued grants relating to inventions, grants of exclusive rights and privileges regarding the importation and establishment of industries new to the realm, and monopoly grants relating to known commodities.2 The first known grant by a State to an inventor occurred in the Republic of Florence in 14212. In England, the practice got out of hand and dissatisfaction over the monopoly grants led to the Statute of Monopolies of 1623 which declared all grants of monopoly rights to individuals unlawful, with one exception: the authority to grant exclusive rights to inventors for a period of 14 years.
Adam Smith3 was among the first to articulate the basic principles of a free market economy in his 1776 treatise ”An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”. The process of deductive reasoning that he followed emanated from an understanding of the motivations of the individual and how, in the aggregate, they can be utilized to the advantage of the society at large. He contended that men have a passionate desire for bettering their condition - ”a desire that comes with us from the womb, and never leaves us until we go into the grave.” He acknowledged that permitting individuals to be controlled by a passion for self-betterment could lead to disruptive influences. However, in a societal context, when left alone, an ”invisible hand”, whose instrument is competition, gives rise to an orderly society where all classes benefit.
In the Summer of 1787, at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, following the bitter Revolutionary War which extricated the new nation from the bonds of monarchy, 55 delegates from the 13 states met to write the Constitution for the United States of America. They were especially concerned with limiting the power of the government and securing the liberty of its citizens. But they were also concerned about the economic viability of the new nation and were influenced by the writings of Adam Smith. They sought a society which allowed all individuals to better themselves by virtue of their hard work and creativity, yet assure that the fruits of this would eventually pass to society at large. Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution states : ”The Congress shall have Power to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries”. It should be noted that despite the intense preoccupation of the founding fathers with the rights of individuals, this is one of the very few rights that was actually included in the original Constitution; the rights of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to assemble, freedom of religion, etc. came four years later in 1791 with the passage of the 10 Amendments to the Constitution known as the Bill of Rights. So important was considered the encouragement of individual innovation in the ”useful arts”, that the first Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, assumed the leadership of the Board of Arts, the predecessor of the Patent Office. Thomas Jefferson actually reviewed and approved the very first United States patent applications. Abraham Lincoln, the only U. S. President to hold a U. S. Patent, stated: "The patent system added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius"4.
It is very clear that in the United States of America, the greatest inventors were strongly motivated by the Patent system. Thomas A. Edison patented 1,093 inventions. His office in West Orange, New Jersey, was lined with the Patent Gazette which was an important reference work for him. Much of his energy was directed towards protecting his inventions in litigation.16 Edison’s inventions spawned tremendous competition, as well as a multitude of industries. Electric power, lighting, recording, motion pictures, batteries, rubber, and other industries were started by Edison. Clearly, the Patent system provided him with the incentives needed to pursue his inventions, and the public benefitted immensely in precisely the manner described by Adam Smith3.
The concept of the ”patent” is that as a reward for the investment in time, effort, creativity, and money, the inventor is allowed to have exclusive rights to sell and profit from his or her ” new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof” in the United States of America for a specified period of time. Society at large benefits because after that period of time, fixed by Congress, the invention shall enter the public domain and will be available to all. Furthermore, Congress requires full disclosure of the invention in a U. S. Patent so that, promoting competition in the vein of Adam Smith2, competitors can exploit concepts in patented technology in order to seek alternative technologies to achieve the same ends and allow them to participate in the same markets. A mechanism of continued improvement is thereby initiated, through which society reaps the benefits of lower prices, better quality, and new and better products.
Although the founding fathers were aware of the power of the patent system to provide incentives, they were not naive to the problems that would result. In 1813, Thomas Jefferson predicted the onslaught of litigation and warned5:
”If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called and idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from on to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody.”
The onslaught of litigation indeed occurred and intensified up to the present.
As with all great institutions designed for the public good, man will seek to exploit the system in ways not intended by the creators. U. S. Supreme Court Justice Bradley, speaking for the Supreme court, in the Atlantic Works vs. Brady case in 1883 wrote :
”The design of the patent laws is to reward those who make some substantial discovery of invention, which adds to our knowledge and makes a step in advance in the useful arts. Such inventors are worthy of all favor. It was never the object of those laws to grant a monopoly for every trifling device, every shadow of a shade of an idea, which would naturally and spontaneously occur to any skilled mechanic or operator in the ordinary progress of manufactures. Such an indiscriminate creation of exclusive privileges tends rather to obstruct than to stimulate invention. It creates a class of speculative schemers who make it their business to watch the advancing wave of improvement, and gather its foam in the form of patented monopolies, which enable them to lay a heavy tax upon the industry of the country, without contributing anything to the real advancement of the arts. It embarrasses the honest pursuit of business with fears and apprehensions of concealed liens and unknown liabilities to lawsuits and vexatious accountings for profits made in good faith.”
While the Supreme Court eloquently articulated the manner in which the patent system was being exploited in ways not intended, they did not put an end to the abuse of the patent laws. Thomas Edison16 once lamented that ”every good man” was being driven out of business by fear of the ”patent sharks”. Baldwin16 writes, however, that press accounts of the time describe Edison’s ”relentless legal maneuvering” depicting him as ” the biggest ‘shark’ of them all”.
Today in America, the business of ”intellectual property” is alive and well. Mind-boggling sums of money are expended in legal fees to obtain patents, to litigate allegedly infringed patents, and to license or sell patents. Similarly, the number of patents issued in a given calendar year has increased dramatically. In the opinion of some, the level of innovation for which patents are issued today does not reach the high standard that the founding fathers had envisioned. At the dawn of the Twenty-First Century, one can indeed question whether the patent laws promote innovation or stifle it.
There has been an enormous amount of discussion in recent years on the ”reform”of engineering education. The National Science Foundation, in particular, has assumed a major leadership role in this effort, dedicating many millions of dollars to activities such as the Engineering Coalitions whereby experiments in new innovative approaches to learning have been encouraged. The Accrediting Board for Engineering in Technology (ABET) has recently published its Criteria 2000 which encourages new and innovative approaches to engineering education, and emphasized outcomes over process.
In what follows, four axioms will be presented which will seek to persuade the reader that a solid understanding of patents should be an integral part of an engineering undergraduate education in all branches of engineering, especially in view of the fact that most of our graduates at the bachelors level proceed to jobs in industry.
AXIOM #1: Optimal Design is an Integrative Process
Sir Isaac Newton, in a 1675 letter to Robert Hooke, stated: ”If I have ever seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” So it is with the design process. If one truly wishes to design the best possible product, one must integrate the experience and accomplishment of predecessors. The patent literature shows in considerable detail the very best design that particular inventors could conceive of at that particular point in history. The high cost of obtaining a patent and the ”best mode” requirement of the law ensures this. It is clear that not all inventions are commercially feasible, or even good. Nevertheless, a good engineer can identify those which are excellent and learn much about the inherent problems, how the inventor overcame the problems, and the background which led to the need for better technology. One of the best ways of learning design is to see case studies of how experts in the field approached a particular project. The patent literature provides this.
While American engineering students are generally well-grounded in the fundamentals, design courses rarely provide an historical perspective on how designs have advanced in the particular discipline of interest. As a result, engineering students tend to design in a vacuum, basing their concepts on their own limited personal experience. The engineering design curriculum should provide students with an appreciation of the work of predecessors and emphasize the importance to ” . . build on the shoulders. . .” of previous designs. Proficiency with searching the patent literature can provide the needed background and enable engineering students to utilize ideas and approaches that they never considered at the outset.
AXIOM # 2: Innovation in a Litigatious Environment can be Dangerous
There have been many cases where companies have developed engineering designs, incurred the expense of tooling for production, and were ready to go to market, only to find that the same designs have already been patented. Even worse, companies have gone to market, only to get sued for staggering sums of money for patent infringement. Settlements in patent infringement cases in the United States for $200 million or more are not unknown9 , and multimillion dollar settlements are quite common. Since patent infringement litigation is usually between corporations with major resources, and their livelihood frequently depends upon patented technology, the expense of patent litigation can exceed that of other types of litigation by many times. In worse case scenarios, companies have been put out of business due to patent infringement issues.
AXIOM # 3 The Ethics of Innovative Design are Intricate
When the founding fathers incorporated the patent system in the United States Constitution, they explicitly stated that its purpose was to : ”to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts”. There are two mechanisms provided by the patent system by which progress is promoted. The first mechanism is that after the expiration of a patent (currently 20 years from filing), the invention becomes the property of the public. However, twenty years is an eternity in a competitive environment, and it was not intended that progress wait so long. Hence, the second mechanism in which the patent system promotes progress is through the search for non-infringing means fulfilling the same need, thereby enabling others to compete in the same technological arena. The motivation to compete will drive individuals and corporations to seek novel ways of participating in the market without infringing on others rights. In the process, new and better technologies are developed and the march of progress continues. Although there are many who regard ”designing around a patent” as an unprofessional activity, such attitudes totally misunderstand the dynamics of a free-market economy. Adam Smith would applaud efforts to ”design around” patents because they are instruments of progress brought on by competition.
Regardless of one’s inclinations, in the real world of American industry, the practice of ”designing around a patent” is alive and well. Short courses10 entitled: ”Designing Around Valid U. S. Patents” are widely advertised and professionally acceptable. Graduates of engineering schools should be well grounded in the ethics of this practice because if they are designing novel products in a competitive arena, they will probably be expected to tuned be into the competition and to develop competitive products. There is an old adage in industry that your competitor is the first purchaser of a new product off your assembly line. While Thomas Edison16 frequently expressed outrage for those who designed around his patents, calling them ”patent sharks”, he was quite adept at designing around the patents of others himself, and contributed much to the advancement of American industry in the process.
Familiarity with the practice of ”designing around a patent” is beneficial for a design engineer for another reason. In prosecuting a patent, one seeks the broadest scope possible. Hence, it is good exercise for a design engineer who has developed a patentable invention to ask the rhetorical question: ”How can my invention be designed around?” In specifying my invention, am I incorporating unnecessary limitations? Is their an alternative way of practicing my invention by making a minor (or major) modification? The engineer can then arrive at alternate designs which can be included in the patent (referred to as ”embodiments of the invention”), and the claim language can be drafted to include all of these embodiments resulting in a stronger and better patent. After performing this exercise, the engineer might actually come up with new concepts that were better than the original. Hence, this activity of seeking alternative designs to achieve the same function is good design practice, as well as being good patent practice. Furthermore, if an engineer is well versed in patent law, this type of analysis is an integral part of his/her thinking process right in the beginning of the design, rather than at the production stage where changes are costly. This approach of seeking alternative approaches; viz, ”designing around” one’s own invention, is a practice that should be introduced in undergraduate engineering curricula. In the survey of industrial needs for entry-level engineers, Lang et al.13 found that industry ranked ”Ability to Formulate a Range of Alternative Problem Solutions” the highest among the questions directed to the ABET 2000 criteria on problem solving.
The legal literature clearly shows that other practices such as infringement, plagiarism, espionage, and fraud, also are not as uncommon as we would wish in American industry. Clearly these are highly unprofessional. Hence, an undergraduate education should provide an engineer with an ethical compass so as to enable one to be a true professional engineer who knows the difference between aggressive competition and unscrupulous behavior. Discussion of the ethics of intellectual property naturally leads into an analysis of a wide range of behaviors which are aroused in the heat of competition.
AXIOM # 4: Patent Rights are Valuable Assets
A patent is a piece of property very much akin to land. It can be bought, sold, and licensed for appreciable sums of money. For certain technology, licensing fees can create revenue streams of many millions of dollars per year for the owner of a patent. When a patent is filed in the United States, ownership of patent resides with the inventor unless the inventor signs away his rights, or ”assigns” the patent, to his/her designee. The question of who is the inventor is a crucial issue. In the United States, the inventor is the person who first conceived of the invention. It is not the helper, or the engineer who implemented the concept, the team who brought it to market, the group leader, or the employer. While engineers are often magnanimous in sharing credit with colleagues in journal publications and other work products, such collegial gestures have no place in determining inventorship.
Particularly in industry, but also in academia, engineers frequently are obliged to sign a contract upon commencing employment transferring some or all of future patent rights to the employer. Sometimes, the rights of the employers are limited to the technology in which the employee is working, and sometimes not. In some states, such rights of the employer are considered implicit in the employment of a person if the invention is related to area of employment, so that even if no formal contract is signed, patent rights may be automatically assigned to the employer. The rights of an inventor and the rights of an employer are quite complicated and many ethical issues can arise as to who owns an invention and who is entitled to credit for the invention. It is not unknown for corporate executives to claim inventorship inappropriately or unbeknownst to the actual inventor simply to enhance their professional status.
In summary, in the undergraduate engineering curriculum, students should be apprized of the opportunities, rights, and responsibilities that they must face when they become professional engineers. If they pursue industrial careers in the United States and are engaged in innovative design, patent issues are likely to become of major importance to them. They should also have a clear understanding of what is, and what is not, ethical behavior and what are their responsibilities to society as professional engineers.
Patents are generally written and managed through the application process (”prosecuted”) by patent agents or patent attorneys who are licensed by the United States Patent & Trademark Office. A list of licensed practitioners is available on the USPTO web site.
The cover page of a typical United States patent is always represented in a standard format in order to facilitate searching. Such a cover page is shown in Fig. 2. The information that is readily available includes the patent number, the dates of issue and of filing, the name of the inventor, the assignee (owner of the invention), references cited, the Abstract, and a single sketch representative of the invention.
The basic structure of any U. S. patent is as follows6:
Figure 1 - Typical Cover Page of a United States Patent
In describing his/her invention, the inventor has the duty to forthrightly disclose the most relevant inventions that were known prior to the current invention (prior art), the inventor is required to present the ”best mode” known to him/her for practicing the invention, and to disclose the specific problems that the invention attempts to solve. The description (specification) should
articulate what is new and useful about the invention, and, should be explained in sufficient detail to enable a ”person of ordinary skill in the art” to make or use the invention. Failure to comply with these requirements can be cause for invalidating a patent. The claims of the patent define the technology for which the inventor can claim ownership and thereby exclude others from practicing.
Currently, a patent enables its owner to exclude others from practicing the invention for a period of 20 years from the date of filing. The processing time for patents varies considerably depending on the nature of the invention, the scope of the claimed invention, and the quality of the disclosure, but generally varies from 1-3 years. Inventions in areas of national priority such as the environment, energy, counter-terrorism, superconductivity, recombinant DNA, HIV/AIDS, and biotechnology can be expedited to ensure that the latest technology is available to society.
Crawford8 asserts the need for students and professors to avail themselves of the patent literature and she provides an excellent description of the resources that are available for patent searches as well as methods of performing on-line and off-line patent searches. Prior to the INTERNET, patent searches were difficult without actually going to a search room. Today, several free on-line search facilities are readily available. The following provides some useful information on how to obtain patents and access to the patent literature:
Unfortunately, patent literature predating 1971 is not yet available on the web. Considering the recent growth of the INTERNET, however, the on-line databases should improve rapidly.
A United States patent does not exclude others from practicing the invention outside the United States, but it does prevent the sale of products in the United States made through the use of the patented technology even though they were manufactured abroad. The International Trade Commission regularly places injunctions against the importation of foreign made products that allegedly infringe on U. S. patents. Since most nations require novelty for patentability, a U. S. patent can prevent others from obtaining a patent in another nation on the same technology.
Over the past 8 years, the author has developed a 3 credit-hour senior-level project-oriented design course entitled: Thermal Systems Design in which the patent literature and the role of patents in design is heavily integrated. The course requires two design projects during the semester. Enrollment in the class is usually about 25 students. Although the author has conducted this course for mechanical engineers, the approach is equally adaptable to any branch of engineering.
A key feature of the course is to simulate a highly competitive industrial design environment. For each project, the class is broken up into about 5 teams of 5 students each. Once the projects get under way, each team is expected to regard the conduct of their project as ”top secret” and in no way confer with members of other teams. The other teams are the ”competition”! Students are given flexibility in the choice of team-mates. In the competitive environment established, there is a tendency for the high-achievers to unite while underachievers find themselves likewise assembled. While this characteristic of the model is sometimes disturbing, it does make excellence possible and establishes a high standard, which is viewed as the more important outcome.
Typically, before the semester begins, the author the Public Search Room of the U. S. Patent Office in Arlington, VA whereby appropriate patents are selected. While the author has found working in the Search Room preferable, the search can easily be done on the web. One immediately realizes that the Patent Office provides a veritable gold mine for ideas for potential design projects. In selecting patents, particular attention is given to those that are assigned to major corporations or prosecuted by a major patent law firm to insure that the first patent to which the students are exposed is legally well crafted and one which covers realistic technology. Crawford8 humorously showed that not all patents are commercially viable. The patent shown in Fig. 2 was used for a project. In Table I is a list of some patents that have been used as the basis for projects in this course.
Each project consists of designing a product for a specific application based on the innovations described in the selected patent. In addition to the selected patent, a Project Summary is provided which specifies goals, design constraints, as well as the target markets. Since patents attempt to have a scope which is broad enough to cover a wide spectrum of potential applications, an inventor provides enough information to enable one to practice the invention, but rarely limit the specification to a specific design. There is normally a chasm between what is usually described in the patent and a marketable design. The idea of the design project is to bridge this chasm. In so doing, user needs must be established, materials must be selected, structural elements must be designed, the system as a whole must be understood, integration into a larger system must be analyzed, cost analysis must be done, and a variety of other activities. Setting priorities and distribution of tasks is left to the individual team to determine, and interesting differences between the teams usually occur.
|
Patent No. |
Inventor |
Title |
|
4,640,340 |
Noda et al. |
Heated or Cooled Steering Wheel |
|
5,250,032 |
Carter et al. |
Heater for In Vivo Blood Infusion |
|
4,856,294 |
Scaringe, et al |
Micro-Climate Control Vest |
|
4,294,078 |
MacCracken |
Method & System for the Compact Storage of Heat and Coolness by Phase Change Materials |
|
3,259,176 |
Rice |
Environmental Control System |
|
4,342,200 |
Lowi |
Combined Engine Cooling System and Waste Heat Driven Heat Pump |
|
4,416,416 |
Maltby |
Two-Port Thermally Responsive Valve |
Table I - Examples of Patents used for Thermal Systems Design Projects
The Project Summary can be of three different types, each defining a plausible situation that a design engineer might encounter in industry. They are as follows:
|
TYPE I: |
Our company, GW Engineering, seeks to enter a market and has purchased a license for a patent. It is known that competitors hold patents on alternate technology and the team is therefore advised to avoid straying too far from the elements of the licensed patent for fear of risking an infringement situation. The students are instructed to design a product based on the patent claims. |
|
TYPE II: |
Our Company, GW Engineering, seeks to enter a market and Company X offers to license us a patent which it asserts will enable us to successfully compete. GW Engineering’s design team is charged with determining if the invention is feasible and worth paying hefty licensing fees. There is often disagreement among the various groups as to this determination, leading to very spirited and probing discussions. |
|
TYPE III: |
GW Engineering must enter a highly competitive market now or miss the boat. Its customers are pleading for a special product which answers their needs. However, Company X, our prime competitor is the leader in the field and holds a patent on an invention which precisely satisfies our customers’ needs. Company X refuses to license the technology. Company X will soon dominate the market unless we take action immediately. The goal is to ”design around” Company X’s invention and obtain a non-infringing alternative that will enable GW Engineering to satisfy its customers needs, as well as reap immense profits. |
During the semester, lectures are devoted to explaining the fundamentals of patents, going over the technical details of the particular patent used for the project, ethics, economic principles, and principles of good design. In addition, case studies, field trips, and guest lectures are sometimes included.
Each project has a duration of about six weeks and the amount of work to be done is substantial. For this reason, team organization is an important element of success. It is frequently observed that teams having difficulty with the first project improve greatly on the second after gaining experience working as a team. Students learn to break up the project into tasks, to delegate the tasks among team members, and to integrate all of their findings. For each project, each team must give three presentations: two interim and one final. The interim presentations are ”top-secret” and only the team and the professor participate. The final presentation is formal and is with full class participation.
The final presentation is an important element in the educational process since it constitutes the first opportunity for the competing teams to observe the work of the other teams. The different groups are encouraged to critique the work of their colleagues as well as to learn from them. Experience has shown that these presentations take on a very competitive tone and are quite dynamic. They provide lessons that are not easily forgotten. In a given cohort, the range of accomplishment can be staggering. Teams that work effectively and where every individual carries his/her weight demonstrate creativity and outstanding accomplishment. Other teams flounder with disputes, poor coordination, domineering and oppressive individuals, and lackadaisical participants - - - phenomena of the real world! In the end, however, everyone benefits by observing at close-hand in this microcosm the difference between effective and ineffective teamwork and the consequences in terms of competitive position. Another interesting aspect of the final presentations is the dramatically different approaches observed between teams. Some teams might have highly creative designs, others might perform very advanced materials selection, and others might develop great insight into human factors or cost analysis. An important lesson that often emerges is that there are different ways to approach design, all of them may be excellent, but one is probably the best. Seeing this at the final presentation teaches them the importance of not being satisfied with an excellent design, because there may be another approach which will deliver an even better design.
The importance of the patent system in promoting engineering innovation was well known to Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, and many other great American leaders of antiquity. The importance of the patent system in promoting engineering innovation is currently well known and growing in industry. However, a review of the curricula in modern American engineering schools suggests that patents are not recognized as an important element in the pedagogy of design and innovation. This is partly due to the fundamental culture of universities where ideas are freely and openly shared, rather than protected. Thus the idea of patents runs counter to the traditional mentality of universities. University faculty are inclined to be more in tune with the open research culture than the protective industrial culture, and have little interest in patents. Still another reason why patents have not been widely used in undergraduate education is that, until recently, they were difficult to obtain unless there was a Patent and Trademark Depository Library nearby (there usually was not).
In the Twenty-First Century, the patent system will play a more substantial role in academia for three reasons:
There are clear dichotomies presented by the patent system. It serves both as a promoter of progress in the useful arts by providing incentives, and as an obstacle to progress by threatening litigation for seemingly obvious improvements. It preserves for posterity the advance of technology, but seeks to enable access to be controlled by self-serving individuals. It encourages the pursuit of ideas, yet, defies the free spread of ideas among humans ordained by nature5. While the ”invisible hand” of Adam Smith2 appears to ensure that, in balance, the patent system works for the benefit of society, the graduate of an engineering school, entering American industry, should be aware of each aspect of these dichotomies.