Patent Act of 1836
Encyclopedia
The Patent Act of 1836 established a number of important changes in the United States patent system. These include:
- The examination of patent applicationPatent applicationA patent application is a request pending at a patent office for the grant of a patent for the invention described and claimed by that application. An application consists of a description of the invention , together with official forms and correspondence relating to the application...
s prior to issuing a patentPatentA patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
. This was the second time this was done anywhere in the world. The only other time an examination period existed prior to this act was in the United States from 1790 to 1793 under the Patent Act of 1790. Prior to this, patents were issued on all applications, even if they were direct copies of earlier patents. It was left to the courts to decide validity in the event of a lawsuit. - The hiring of professional patent examiners. Initially only one examiner was hired, but soon a second one was hired to handle the increased work load.
- The establishment of a library of prior artPrior artPrior art , in most systems of patent law, constitutes all information that has been made available to the public in any form before a given date that might be relevant to a patent's claims of originality...
to assist in examinations.