An 1812 legal opinion from Attorney General William Pinkney is being highlighted as an early statement that the U.S. patent system does not pass moral judgment. The memo, addressed to Secretary of State James Monroe, concluded that the government could not refuse a patent to James McDonald for a brick-making machine simply because officials disapproved of McDonald's conduct. Pinkney wrote that the Department had no discretion to decline the patent if the statutory requirements were met, and the patent issued ten days later.
The opinion is significant because it predates Justice Story's famous 1817 charge in Lowell v. Lewis, which is commonly cited as the origin of the moral utility doctrine. In Lowell, Story read the word "useful" to exclude inventions injurious to public morals, such as devices to poison people or facilitate assassination. Pinkney's memo, by contrast, was about the inventor, not the invention—no one considered a brick machine immoral. Still, both reflect an early reluctance to turn the patent grant stage into a forum for moral judgment, leaving such questions to the courts or to the marketplace.