Hrdy and Brean on Testing the Gernsback Hypothesis: Science Fiction's Influence on Patents and Innovation

Camilla Alexandra Hrdy, Rutgers Law School; Yale University Information Society Project, and Daniel Harris Brean, Senior In-House Intellectual Property Counsel, Respiratory Care, Philips; Intellectual Property Expert in Residence, Duquesne University Kline School of Law, are publishing Testing the Gernsback Hypothesis: Science Fiction's Influence on Patents and Innovation in the 2025 Symposium Issue of the Houston Law Review. Here is the abstract.

A common thesis in the science fiction community is that science fiction has an impact on innovation because it inspires readers and even professional scientists to perfect and put into practice the inventions they learn about through science fiction. We call this the "Gernsback hypothesis," because it was posited most clearly by the science fiction editor and inventor, Hugo Gernsback. This paper reveals that patents provide an invaluable source of information for testing the Gernsback hypothesis. It explains several approaches for using patents to test whether, and how, science fiction influences inventors. It reveals the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches. This paper should be of particular interest today, when powerful tech moguls admit that science fiction deeply influenced their pursuits, from artificial intelligence, to virtual reality, to space travel. It would be helpful to gain a more precise lens into how science fiction affects inventors. Patents could provide a resource for gaining insights into this process.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Pfander and Zakowski on Non-Party Protective Relief in the Early Republic: Judicial Power to Annul Letters Patent

James E. Pfander and Mary Zakowski, both of Northwestern University School of Law, are publishing Non-Party Protective Relief in the Early Republic: Judicial Power to Annul Letters Patent in volume 128 of the Northwestern University Law Review. Here is the abstract.

Much of the debate over the constitutionality of universal or non-party protective relief in the federal court system has focused on lessons drawn from historical practice. But with its emphasis on injunctive relief, the literature has largely ignored forms of adjudication that arose outside the courts of equity and led to judgments and decrees affecting the rights of non-parties. As a result, the story of non-party protective relief has not yet been fully told. This Article offers a more complete story, highlighting a range of proceedings in which federal courts issued judgments that settled a matter once and for all and operated on all the world. Some familiar examples include proceedings in admiralty, where a decree could settle title conclusively and operate on those who did not appear in the litigation. Less familiar examples include naturalization judgments, which conferred the status of citizenship on an individual once and for all. We focus here on yet a third example: the power of federal courts, acting under the patent laws of the 1790s, to entertain individual suits to cancel or annul a patent for all purposes. Such cancellation proceedings, based on a practice that developed in England on the writ of scire facias, were understood to operate as a general matter and could confer benefits on artisans and manufacturers who did not appear in the litigation. Patent cancellation remains a part of the federal judicial role today. History suggests, then, that federal courts were understood to have power, when so authorized by Congress, to issue decrees that settled matters conclusively and therefore conferred burdens or benefits on non-parties. Over the nineteenth century, the patent cancellation power migrated to federal courts of equity, resulting in decrees that prohibited patent owners from asserting claims against non-parties. These early examples of non-party protection make it challenging to argue on historical grounds that Article III of the Constitution bars federal courts from granting such relief today. In a brief concluding section, we suggest that assessments of non-party protective relief should focus instead on congressional authority; such a focus could help distinguish universal injunctions in general from the set-aside power conferred in section 706 of the Administrative Procedure Act.

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Hrdy and Brean on Enabling Science Fiction @CamillaHrdy @AkronLaw @yaleisp

Camilla Alexandra Hrdy, University of Akron School of Law; Yale University Information Society Project; and Daniel Harris Brean are publishing Enabling Science Fiction in the Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review, Science Fiction and the Law Symposium Issue (2021). Here is the abstract.

Patent law promotes innovation by giving inventors 20-year-long exclusive rights to their inventions. To be patented, however, an invention must be “enabled,” meaning the inventor can actually describe it in enough detail to teach others how to make and use the invention at the time the patent is filed. When inventions are not enabled, like a perpetual motion machine or a time travel device, they are derided as “mere science fiction”—products of the human mind, or the daydreams of armchair coots, that are not suitable for the patent system. This Essay argues that, in fact, the literary genre of science fiction has its own unique—albeit far laxer—enablement requirement. Since the genre’s origins, fans have demanded that the inventions depicted in science fiction meet a minimum standard of scientific plausibility. Otherwise, the material is denigrated as lazy hand- waving or, worse, “mere fantasy.” Taking this insight further, the Essay argues that, just as patents positively affect the progress of science and technology by teaching others how to make and use real inventions, so too can science fiction, by stimulating scientists’ imagination about what sorts of technologies might one day be possible. Thus, like patents, science fiction can have real world impacts for the development of science and technology. Indeed, the Essay reveals that this trajectory—from science fiction to science reality—can be seen in the patent record itself, with several famous patents tracing their origins to works of science fiction.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.