Benjamin Robbins Curtis

“ This section enables the defendant, in any action on the case founded on letters-patent, to give in evidence, under the general issue, any special matter of which notice in writing may have been given to the plaintiff, or his attorney, thirty days before the trial, tending to prove, among other things, that the patentee was not the original and first inventor of the thing patented, or of some substantial and material part thereof claimed as new, or that it had been described in some public work anterior to the supposed discovery thereof by the patentee ”

“ This section authorizes not only the patentee, but his executors, administrators, and assigns, whether of the whole or of a sectional interest in the patent, to make disclaimer, 'stating therein the extent of his interest in such patent.' This instrument states that the plaintiff was himself the patentee, and having thus shown a grant to himself of the whole interest, it is silent respecting a transfer of any part of it. The fair implication is that he still owns the whole ”

“ We understand it to have been the practice of the courts of the State of New York so to treat such a withdrawal of a juror, when the presiding Judge in his discretion has thought proper to do so, and under the act of July 20, 1840, (5 Stat. at Large, 394,) the Circuit Court might properly conform to that practice. ”

“ Your petitioner, therefore, hereby enters his disclaimer to so much of said claim as extends the application of the expansive and contracting power of a metallic rod, by different degrees of heat, to any other use or purpose than that of regulating the heat of a stove, in which such rod shall be acted upon directly by the heat of the stove or the fire which it contains ”