Innovate or Perish: Managing the Enduring Technology Company in the Global Market

Jeffersonian Liberal Encouragement of Innovation

Both State Street Bank and Lundgren clearly encourage creative genius beyond technical fields, including innovations in marketing, finance, human resources, e-commerce, and beyond. Judge Giles Sutherland Rich struggled to find that the data processing claims of Signature’s patent 5,193,056 were within a statutory class of patentable subject matter, yet the result is consistent with the broad-based encouragement of all forms of innovation from our Founding Fathers and Supreme Court precedent:

Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power “to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” Thomas Jefferson wrote, “Ingenuity should receive a liberal encouragement.” Abraham Lincoln, who was the only president to hold a patent, described the patent system as one of the three most important developments “in the world’s history.” Authored in part by Judge Giles Sutherland Rich, the 1952 revisions to 35 U.S.C., section 103, clarified that a “flash of genius” is not required for patentability, stating that “patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made.”

Further liberal encouragement is found in Graham v. John Deere^[4] wherein the Supreme Court sanctioned the use of secondary evidence, such as commercial success, to uphold as patentable any invention that is ...