Re:France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
by azernik on Sunday April 29, 2018 @05:33PM
(#16954026)
Intellectual property isn't quite property either. The Supreme Court recently rules against a patent troll claiming that an administrative revocation of a patent was a taking without due process precisely by this reasoning.[EDIT: as detailed at http://www.scotusblog.com/2018/04/opinion-analysis-justices-...]
Specifically:
> Two key points support the view that patents are matters of purely “public right.” The first is the notion, illustrated by quotations from earlier cases, that the patent is a “creature of statute law” that “take[s] from the public rights of immense value, and bestow[s] them upon the patentee.” The second is that the Constitution explicitly allocates to Congress the power to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts” by granting patents; Congress’ decision to authorize the executive branch to grant patents is thus a constitutionally sanctioned delineation of “the executive power,” something which “need not be adjudicated in an Article III court.”
Specifically:
> Two key points support the view that patents are matters of purely “public right.” The first is the notion, illustrated by quotations from earlier cases, that the patent is a “creature of statute law” that “take[s] from the public rights of immense value, and bestow[s] them upon the patentee.” The second is that the Constitution explicitly allocates to Congress the power to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts” by granting patents; Congress’ decision to authorize the executive branch to grant patents is thus a constitutionally sanctioned delineation of “the executive power,” something which “need not be adjudicated in an Article III court.”
Public rights are not property.