1836, with the es- tablishment of the U.S. Patent Office, the screening requirement had been reinstated and the foundations of today's system were laid.
The question of what can be patented has also fallen to the courts. The peddling of "patent medicines" during the early 19th century led to a judicial ban on patents for "mischievous" creations. In 1822, a fed- eral court ruled that "mere abstractions" could not be patented. In 1978, the Supreme Court cited the 1822...