![]() We make commitments to that agency for new medicines that we would like to launch, selling and marketing our products once the agency approves products for distribution. And like other corporations, Merck routinely engages with the U.S. trademark system to protect our company’s brand names and the reputations of our medicines. Like other corporations, Merck also uses the U.S. In the past decade, the ever-increasing pace has reached about three hundred thousand patents granted each year. Patent and Trademark Office – the agency responsible for assessing whether a claimed invention meets the legal qualifications for a patent – has issued over ten million patents. patent system dates back to the Constitution, in which the founders gave Congress the right to “promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” 3 Congress soon exercised this right for inventors in the first Patent Act, just as it protected the writings of authors in the Copyright Act. At Merck, where I am chairman and CEO, when our scientists develop a novel, lifesaving medicine or vaccine, we seek for it the legal protection of a patent. In the pharmaceutical industry in which Merck operates, and in other high-technology areas, patents are critical they are a fundamental means of protecting the inventive work of our employees. Patents are granted in all types of industries and sciences. Patents, Congress declared, can cover “anything under the sun that is made by man.” 2 Under the United States’ patent laws, inventors may obtain the reward of a patent – a time-limited monopoly over one’s own invention – in exchange for disclosing the invention to the public, which adds to human knowledge and allows for future advancements. The patent system can be particularly important, to take an example. Corporations, as legally recognized entities, routinely interact with the law.ĭepending on the nature of their business, corporations interact with different segments of the law, with some areas so routinely that they are part of the corporation’s day-to-day work. ![]() Corporations can be held criminally accountable for breaking laws, just as natural persons can. ![]() Corporations can also sue and be sued, and then be bound by the result: recovering or owing compensation, or being subject to other court orders that resolve a dispute. Like people, corporations must pay taxes and follow rules and regulations, and they can enter into contracts and buy and sell property. ![]() Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it, either expressly, or as incidental to its very existence.” 1 Whether only a few people or thousands make up its shareholders, leaders, and employees, they are not the corporation: under law, the corporation exists as an entity unto itself, with equal standing and responsibility for some purposes as if it were a person. While corporations can have very clear identities – brands, trademarks, and other symbols that can be familiar to the public – they (and other forms of business associations) are wholly products of law.Īs Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in the early days of the Supreme Court: “A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. As members of American society – often, very powerful and influential ones – corporations have a deep interest in the health of the nation’s democracy, a mainstay of which is the system of justice writ large. W h y do corpo r ations h ave a stake in the issue of justice? Wh at is their inte rest in li fting up the poor, improving the lives of low-income and disadvantaged people and groups, and striving for equal access to justice for all? How is supporting a well-functioning, fair, and accessible legal system an act of deep political, economic, and social self-interest for a corporation?īeyond engaging with and depending on various elements of the justice system, corporations are part of the fabric of society. ![]()
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