This month's article is contributed by Keith Kevelson, a 3L at UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law.
Patent Law faces an image problem today. Large numbers of scientists and engineers see patents in the most negative light imaginable; they see them as tools of predatory monopolists at large companies. Sadly, the purpose of patents is the exact opposite: we have patents for small businesses and independent inventors to protect their innovations form the large industrial giants. This was not always the case. A century ago, patent attorneys like Jake Harness would rush to develop patent strategies for a nascent Maxwell Motor Corp (later Chrysler) to help it withstand onslaughts from established giants such as Chevrolet and Ford. There is one life and career from this bygone era that stands out in reminding us how Patent Law helps: the life and career of Alfred Lee Loomis, which is too long and important to be described in one entry. Loomis grew up in a prominent family to say the least, and in those days in which major titans of business had become unquestionable dominant at the end of the Gilded Age in 1912, that meant there was an expectation to practice in white-shoe firms in Corporate Law. Initially, this is exactly what Loomis did as an associate at Winthrop and Stimson upon graduating Harvard Law School in the top of his class in 1912. At this time, large industrial companies, which were just beginning to be broken up, such as Standard Oil, were becoming loathe to patent because it had grown accustomed to simply crushing competition with industrial might(see F.M. Scherer, "Standard Oil as a Technological Innovator, page 5) and could rely heavily on trade secrets. Additionally, increased public opposition to trusts and monopolies was associated with opposition to patent licensing, as shown in the proceedings beginning with General Electric licensing lots of technology to Westinghouse in 1912 and culminating in the 1926 case United States v. General Electric Co. et al; 272 U.S. 476; (1912). Additionally, the public began to realize that many patents, especially medical device patents, of earlier eras were entirely bogus, and thus they began to associate patents with fraud. Also, Patent Law was a very different industry. Practitioners generally needed no formal credentials to prosecute patents during this period(Swanson, Kara W.; Technology and Culture, Jul., 2009, Vol. 50, No. 3 (Jul., 2009), pp. 519-548 ). Patent practitioners were often engaged in lengthy disputes with bar associations over what it meant to be a "patent artist", "patent practitioner", or "patent attorney," as many practitioners were informally-trained engineers with no formal education (Swanson, 523). Loomis changed all of this. As a citizen-scientist, a scientist without a doctorate or university employment, he began pursuing revolutionary scientific experiments on his own. Using his influence as a corporate lawyer, while also working in a ballistics lab during his service to our country in WW1, he would recommend critical reforms and regulations to patent practice to help independent inventors, counter monopolistic influences, and legitimize patent practice in the eyes of the law. He would also go on to promote incredibly important reforms to patent pooling and technology transaction law in order to facilitate the development of radar. While working on these legal reforms, he was also an important advisor to the Manhattan Project, although curiously, I am unable to determine if me made contributions to the Atomic Energy Act of 1952, a law that I have previously criticized on this site. By his death in 1975, the patent was the dominant means of technology protection in all industries. I am still trying to research if Loomis ever actually worked with Robert Rines at MIT during the WW2, but I haven't been able to find anything on that. The one thing that Loomis had that other lawyers lacked in his day was his love and commitment to citizen science. He was working as a hobbyist, tinkering with nascent wireless devices, and experimenting with early biomedical uses of soundwaves. This inquisitive nature belied a deeper quality that Patent Law needs if it is to have the public's respect and continue to contribute to our society: passion.
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