Patents in issuing letters patent is deemed to be
quasi-judicial in character. Hence an act granting a right of appeal
from the Commission to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
is not unconstitutional as conferring executive power upon a judicial
body.[1173]

NATURE AND SCOPE OF THE RIGHT SECURED

The leading case bearing on the nature of the rights which Congress is
authorized to _secure_ is that of Wheaton _v._ Peters. Wheaton charged
Peters with having infringed his copyright on the twelve volumes of
"Wheaton's Reports" wherein are reported the decisions of the United
States Supreme Court for the years from 1816 to 1827 inclusive. Peters's
defense turned on the proposition that inasmuch as Wheaton had not
complied with all of the requirements of the act of Congress, his
alleged copyright was void. Wheaton, while denying this assertion of
fact, further contended that the statute was only intended to _secure_
him in his pre-existent rights at common law. These at least, he
claimed, the Court should protect. A divided Court held in favor of
Peters on the legal question. It denied, in the first place, that there
was any principle of the common law which protected an author in the
sole right to continue to publish a work once published. It denied, in
the second place, that there is any principle of law, common or
otherwise, which pervades the Union except such as are embodied in the
Constitution and the acts of Congress. Nor, in the third place, it held,
did the word "securing" in the Constitution recognize the alleged common
law principle which Wheaton invoked. The exclusive right which Congress
is authorized to _secure_ to authors and inventors owes its existence
solely to the acts of Congress securing it,[1174] from which it follows
that the rights granted by a patent or copyright are subject to such
qualifications and limitations as Congress, in its unhampered
consultation of the public interest, sees fit to impose.[1175]

In giving to authors the exclusive right to dramatize any of their
works, Congress did not exceed its powers under this clause. Even as
applied to pantomime dramatization by means of silent motion pictures,
the act was sustained against the objection that it extended the
copyright to ideas rather than to the words in which they were
clothed.[1176] But the copyright of the description of an art in a book
was held not to lay a foundation for an exclusive claim to the art
itself. Th