Phillip Benjamin Baldwin

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Phillip Benjamin Baldwin (December 23, 1924 - April 20, 2002) from 1968 to 1991 served as a judge on U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals (CCPA) and on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Baldwin was a United States Army Air Corps pilot from 1943 to 1946, flying B-25 Mitchells in the South West Pacific theatre of World War II on low-level bombing raids. His unit was the 405th Flight Squadron, 38th Bomb Group, of the Fifth Air Force. He earned the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with six bronze service stars: (Luzon, Western Pacific, New Guinea, Borneo, China Sea offensive, and the air offensive of Japan). He was also decorated with the American Campaign Medal and by the Philippine Government with the Philippine Liberation Medal. ^[1]

He later went on to pursue his undergraduate degree at North Texas State University, receiving a B.A. in 1949. He studied at both the South Texas College of Law and the Baylor Law School. After graduation from law school, he went into private practice in his hometown of Marshall, Texas, and then moved on to public service a year later, serving as Assistant District Attorney for Harrison County, Texas and later District Attorney. He returned to private practice in Marshall, Texas in 1959 and remained there until his appointment to the CCPA in 1968 by Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Judge Baldwin was the author of In re Moore (444 F. 2d 572, 170 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 260 (Fed. Cir. 1987)), a patent law case establishing the logical asymmetry of the "prior invention" standard between patent interference claims and Rule 131 affidavits. Judge Baldwin retired from the bench on April 8, 1991 and died in Shreveport, Louisiana on April 20, 2002.^[2]

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