Pasquale Joseph Federico
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Pasquale ("Pat") Joseph Federico (March 25, 1902 – January 2, 1982) was a lifelong mathematician and longtime high-ranking official of the
United States Patent Office The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Alexa ...
.


Biography

He was born in
Monessen, Pennsylvania Monessen is a city in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 6,876 at the 2020 census. In 1940, 20,257 people lived there. In 1990 the population was 13,026. Monessen is the southwestern-most municipality of Westmore ...
. About 1910 the family moved to
Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...
, Ohio where he gained a
bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six ...
in physics at
Case Institute of Technology Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is a private research university in Cleveland, Ohio. Case Western Reserve was established in 1967, when Western Reserve University, founded in 1826 and named for its location in the Connecticut Western Res ...
in 1923. He then received his
LL.B Bachelor of Laws ( la, Legum Baccalaureus; LL.B.) is an undergraduate law degree in the United Kingdom and most common law jurisdictions. Bachelor of Laws is also the name of the law degree awarded by universities in the People's Republic of Chi ...
or law degree from
Washington College of Law The American University Washington College of Law (AUWCL or WCL) is the law school of American University, a Private university, private research university in Washington, D.C. It is located on the western side of Tenley Circle in the Tenleyto ...
in 1932. Federico entered the Patent Office in 1923 as a junior examiner in Division 43, and by 1935, he became the Assistant Chief of his division and then became the Division Chief in 1940. He was appointed to the Board of Appeals in 1947, became the Examiner-in-Chief there, and remained there until his retirement from the Office in 1977. Federico was also a prolific author of articles dealing with intellectual property and was also instrumental in several major changes to how patents were issued and how intellectual property is treated, assisting Congress in preparing the
Patent Act of 1952 A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...
along with co-author Judge
Giles Sutherland Rich Giles Sutherland Rich (May 30, 1904 – June 9, 1999) was an associate judge of the United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals (CCPA) and later on was a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circu ...
, in the 1940s to 1950s - in fact, according to Judge Rich, Federico was the man most responsible for getting the 1952 Patent Act through Congress and enacted into law. Federico also served for many years as the Patent Office's unofficial historian and Editor in Chief of the ''
Journal of the Patent and Trademark Office Society The ''Journal of the Patent and Trademark Office Society'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed law journal covering intellectual property law. It was established in 1918. History The journal was established as ''Journal of the Patent Office Society'' in ...
'' (JPTOS) from 1936 to 1942. Some of his most well-known contributions to the field of mathematics focused on the study of
perfect squares In mathematics, a square number or perfect square is an integer that is the square of an integer; in other words, it is the product of some integer with itself. For example, 9 is a square number, since it equals and can be written as . The usu ...
and the writings of Descartes. Federico is credited for providing the quotation said to underlie the scope of patentable subject matter under United States law when he testified before a House subcommittee in 1951 that "under section 101 a person may have invented a machine or manufacture, which may include anything under the sun that is made by man," ''so long as it satisfies the requirements of the patent statute''. This testimony was later quoted by the United States Supreme Court when the Court held in 1980 that living organisms were proper subject matter for patents. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court has since ruled that US patent protection does not extend to "Laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas." Judge Giles S. Rich of the Federal Circuit made these eulogistic remarks about Federico in a JPTOS articleG.S. Rich
''P.J. (Pat) Federico and His Works''," 64 J. Pat. Off. Soc'y 3 (Jan. 1982)
published shortly after Pat's death:
Pat Federico was the ideal public servant. Politicians may come and politicians may go and in the process get most of the publicity in governmental affairs, but it is people like Pat who make government work. It was my privilege and greatly to my benefit to come to know Pat some thirty-four years ago, to have worked with him on a couple of lengthy legislative projects, and to have remained in touch with him throughout the rest of his fruitful life.


The Federico Award

The
Patent and Trademark Office Society The Patent and Trademark Office Society (PTOS) is an American society of intellectual property professionals. The society publishes a quarterly journal, the '' Journal of the Patent and Trademark Office Society'' (JPTOS). History Founded in 191 ...
has given an annual award in his namesake, the Pasquale J. Federico Memorial Award, which is, according to the official website of the award, "intended to recognize outstanding contributions to the Patent and Trademark Systems of the United States of America".PTOS, Federico Award. https://www.ptos.org/committees/federico_award.html Previous award recipients include Stephen Kunin, Nicholas Godici, Paul Michel, Donald Banner, Charles E. Van Horn,
Pauline Newman Pauline Newman (born June 20, 1927) is a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Education and career Born in New York City, New York to Maxwell H. and Rosella G. Newman, Newman received a Bache ...
, C. Marshall Dann, Herbert Wamsley,
Helen Wilson Nies Helen Wilson Nies (August 7, 1925 – August 7, 1996) was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit after previously serving as a United States Judge of the United States Court of Customs and Paten ...
, Mike Kirk, Tom Arnold,
Howard T. Markey Howard Thomas Markey (November 10, 1920 – May 3, 2006) was an American jurist who served as the first Chief United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. He is often credited with establishing that c ...
, Rene D. Tegtmeyer, Isaac Fleischmann, Anne Chasser,
Raymond Chen Raymond T. Chen (born 1968) is a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Biography He joined the intellectual property law firm of Knobbe, Martens, Olson & Bear in Irvine, California. He prose ...
, John Whealan,
Mark Lemley Mark A. Lemley (born c. 1966) is currently the William H. Neukom Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and the Director of the Stanford Law School Program in Law, Science & Technology, as well as a founding partner of the law firm of Durie Tang ...
, Bernard J. Knight,
Teresa Stanek Rea Teresa Stanek Rea is the former Acting Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and former Acting Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Rea obtained her Bachelor of Science degree in pharmacy in 1976 fro ...
, Randall Rader and Deborah Cohn.


Bibliography


Mathematics

*Vector Differential Geometry of Curves, By Pasquale Joseph Federico, Published by George Washington University, 1925 *" Descartes on polyhedra: a study of the De solidorum elementis," By Pasquale Joseph Federico. Edition: illustrated, Published by Springer, 1982 ,


Patent Office

*"The First Patent Act," By Pasquale Joseph Federico, Journal of the Patent Office Society 14:237-252 (April 1932) *"Statutory Disclaimers in Patent Law," By Pasquale Joseph Federico, Published by P. Pearlman, 1935 *"Operation of the Patent Act of 1790," By Pasquale Joseph Federico, Journal of the Patent Office Society 18:237-251 (April 1936) *"A Fragment of Texas History", By P.J. Federico and J.R. Nunn, Journal of the Patent Office Society 18:407-410 (1936) *"Outline of the History of the United States Patent Office," By P.J. Federico, Volume 18, Journal of the Patent Office Society, 251 (1936). *"Treaties Between the United States and Other Countries Relating to Trademarks," By Pasquale Joseph Federico, Published 1949 *"Distribution of Patents Issued to Corporations (1939-55): Study of the Subcommittee on Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Eighty-fourth Congress, Second Session, Pursuant to S. Res. 167," By Pasquale Joseph Federico, United States Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights, United States Patent Office, Published by U. S. Govt. Print. Off., 1957 *"Opposition and Revocation Proceedings in Patent Cases: Study of the Subcommittee on Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Eighty-fourth Congress, Second Session, Pursuant to S. Res. 167," By Pasquale Joseph Federico, United States Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights Published by U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1957 *"Renewal Fees and Other Patent Fees in Foreign Countries: Study of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Eighty-fifth Congress, Second Session, Pursuant to S. Res. 236," By Pasquale Joseph Federico, United States Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights, Published by U.S. Govt. Printing Office, 1958


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Federico, Pasquale Joseph 1902 births 1982 deaths 20th-century American mathematicians Patent examiners