Henry Billings Brown

“ While the testimony of a patentee in derogation of his own patent is usually open to some suspicion, this opinion is so obviously correct that it needs only a comparison of his device with those of Gory and Spiegel to confirm it.
It is true the Orum lock seems to have gained an immediate popularity, to have met with large and increasing sales, and to have had the usual effect of successful patents, in stimulating the activity of business competitors to produce an equally useful and popular device. ”

“ But there are so many other considerations than that of novelty entering into a question of this kind that the popularity of the article becomes an unsafe criterion. For instance, a man may, by the aid of an alluring trademark, succeed in catching the eye of the people, and palming off upon them wares of no greater intrinsic value than those of his rivals ”

“ All that he claims as invention is found in one or more of the prior patents. The dovetailed cavity and the correspondingly shaped case or shell is only a copy of a cavity shown in Fig. 8 of the Gory patent, and it certainly required no invention to make the top plate or selvedge of the same shape so as to completely cover the cavity. The projecting front plate, rounded at the bottom, is shown in the second Spiegel patent, both of these patents also exhibiting a projecting back and front plate, and a projection or groove in the mortise between them. ”