The writings and opinions of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., have inspired generations of legal scholars to explain topics like pragmatic skepticism, legal positivism, legal realism, legal moralism, and other “legal-isms.” Justice Holmes — celebrated and contemptible, beloved and beleaguered, emphatically entrenched in the common law — stumbled into federal patent cases on the Supreme Court, yet there is little scholarship stemming from his few opinions in this area. As the twenty-first century ushers in a new gilded age, replete with important battles over patent law and policy as a mechanism for promoting innovation, Holmes’ unique outlook on public and private law (and patents) at the turn of the twentieth century may offer a new perspective within contemporary debates about patent law and its limitations.