Name Pasquale Federico | Died January 2, 1982 | |
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Books Descartes on Polyhedra: A Study of the De Solidorum Elementis | ||
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.
Biography
He was born in Monessen, Pennsylvania. About 1910 the family moved to Cleveland, Ohio where he gained a bachelor's degree in physics at Case Institute of Technology in 1923.
He was instrumental in several major changes to how patents were issued and how intellectual property is treated.
Federico also served for many years as the Patent Office's unofficial historian and editor of the "Journal of the Patent Office Society""(JPOS). Some of his most well known contributions to the field of mathematics focused on the study of perfect squares 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. The language is often misunderstood, however, because there are many things men make under the sun that cannot be patented: "Laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas," for example, cannot be patented.
Judge Giles S. Rich of the Federal Circuit made these eulogistic remarks about Federico in a JPOS article 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.