Henry Billings Brown

“ When a patent is thus surrendered, there can be no doubt that is continues to be a valid patent until it is reissued, when it becomes inoperative; but, if a reissue be refused, it is entirely clear that the surrender never takes effect, and the patent stands as if no application had ever been made for a reissue. ”

“ Such a patent might be inoperative and invalid as against certain persons who had pirated the underlying principle of the patent, and avoided infringing the exact languge of the claims, and yet be perfectly valid as against others, who were making machines clearly covered by their language. ”

“ This was but little more than putting in statutory form a power which this court had already held to exist, prior to the act of 1832, in the secretary of state, in the absence of a statute. Grant v. Raymond, 6 Pet. 218. ”