The US Constitution as an Interpretive Tool for Obviousness Law

by Dennis Crouch
LKQ’s brief for today’s en banc rehearing begins with the following interesting statement: “As with utility patents, the U.S. Constitution and the Patent Act prohibit design patents on ordinary innovations.” It is the Constitutional question that is most interesting and calls forth the concurring opinion by Justice Douglass in the Great A&P Case.
The attempts through the years to get a broader, looser conception of patents than the Constitution contemplates have been persistent. The Patent Office, like most administrative agencies, has looked with favor on the opportunity which the exercise of discretion affords to expand its own jurisdiction. And so it has placed a host of gadgets under the armour of patents—gadgets that obviously have had no place in the constitutional scheme of advancing scientific knowledge. . . . The fact that a patent as flimsy and as spurious as this one has to be brought all the way to this Court to be declared invalid dramatically illustrates how far our patent system frequently departs from the constitutional standards which are supposed to govern.
Great A&P Tea Co. v. Supermarket Equip. Corp. , 340 U.S. 147, 156 (1950). Although case applied pre-1952 law, the reminder here is poignant. Justice Douglas goes on:
It is worth emphasis that every patent case involving validity presents a question which requires reference to a standard written into the Constitution. . . .  The Congress does not have free reign, for example, to decide that patents should be easily or freely given. . . . Every patent is the grant of a privilege of exacting tolls from the public. The Framers plainly did not want those monopolies freely granted. The invention, to justify a patent, had to serve the ends of science—to push back the frontiers of chemistry, physics, and the like; to make a distinctive contribution to scientific knowledge. That is why through the years the opinions of the Court commonly have taken ‘inventive genius’ as the test. It is not enough that an article is new and useful. The Constitution never sanctioned the patenting of gadgets. Patents serve a higher end—the advancement of science.
The standard of patentability is a constitutional standard; and the question of validity of a patent is a question of law.
Id.   Later, in Deere , the Supreme Court suggests found that the newly written Section 103 was properly seen as statutory codification of the court’s standard “which exists in the law and has existed for more than 100 years, but only by reason of decisions of the courts.”  And, that standard is derived from the Court’s understanding of the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that the patent laws be designed to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.”
The Congress in the exercise of the patent power may not overreach the restraints imposed by the stated constitutional purpose. Nor may it enlarge the patent monopoly without regard to the innovation, advancement or social benefit gained thereby. Moreover, Congress may not authorize the issuance of patents whose effects are to remove existent knowledge from the public domain, or to restrict free access to materials already available. Innovation, advancement, and things which add to the sum of useful knowledge are inherent requisites in a patent system which by constitutional command must ‘promote the Progress of * * * useful Arts.’ This is the standard expressed in the Constitution and it may not be ignored. And it is in this light that patent validity requires reference to a standard written into the Constitution.
Graham v. John Deere Co. of Kansas City , 383 U.S. 1, 5–6 (1966).
Bringing this back to design patents and the LKQ case, the patent challenger here does not deeply engage with the constitutional question, but rather appears to use it as a constant interpretative reminder. GM’s brief does not mention the Constitution or its requirement to “promote the Progress.”