Levi Woodbury

“ Their very necessities and embarrassments, which are the justification for granting the renewal to them, have usually forced them to sell and assign all the original patent, as was the case with Woodworth in this instance; and if in such circumstances the law is to strip them of all benefits under the renewal, and, without any contract to that effect, confer those benefits on the assignees and grantees of the old patent, the law is perfectly suicidal as to the only design to be effected by its bounty. ”

“ There is much, also, in another collateral consideration here, which does not apply in Great Britain, and which restricts conferring the benefit of an extension, or an extension itself, on an assignee by or under any statute, if it goes beyond what a patentee had himself contracted to do.
Here the Constitution limits the powers of Congress to give patents to inventers alone. ”

“ Some estimate can be formed of the usefulness of the present patent, and its title to favor, when one machine is computed to perform the labor of planing and grooving in one day that would require fifty days by a man, and which is supposed to reduce near seven tenths the expense of such work in every building where the improved method is used,-as it ere long will be by the many millions of our own population, and in time over the civilized world. Every honest social system must shield such inventions, and every wise one seeks undoubtedly to encourage them. ”

“ To be liberal, then, in the protection of patentees, is only to be just towards the rights of property. To stimulate them in this and other ways to greater exertions of ingenuity and talent is to increase the public wealth, and hasten the progress of practical improvements, as well as of science. ”

“ And if the individuals who use the improved machines, the fruit of the toil and expense and science of others, were obliged in but one case in a year, over the whole country, to pay something for that further use, is it a great grievance? They are not obliged to employ the patent at all, and will not unless it is better by the amount they pay than what was in use before. ”

“ And to discountenance encroachments on their rights, and defeat piracies of their useful labors, is calculated in the end to better the condition of every rank in society, and introduce wider and faster all the benefits of a superior state of civilization and the arts. ”

“ By what legal authority are assignees cut off from a valuable portion of their interests in a patent, while grantees to use the thing patented are allowed to exercise the whole of theirs, and both under one and the same general permission, covering all 'their respective interests'? ”

“ In fact, the argument is rather a legislative than judicial one, and operates against the policy of the whole section, rather than the construction put on the last clause.
But the hardship to any person, in such case, is more apparent than real. The price to be paid for the new patent is not so much as the gain by it, and hence those who have proposed to use it and do use it after the extension, and pay anew for a new or further term, gain rather than loose, or they would have employed the old machinery in operation before this invention. ”

“ One is not to have the whole of his interests protected and the other a part only, when their equities are the same. But the assignee is to have to the extent of his, which is to make, vend, and use; and the grantee only 'of the right to use' is to have to the extent of his.
This, to my apprehension, is unquestionably the substance of what Congress has said on this topic ”

“ Nor should we allow any prejudices against the utility of patents generally, and much less against the utility of the invention now under consideration, to make our constructions more rigid in this case. ”

“ Nor is it any relief to the community at large, as seems by some to have been argued, to hold that the renewal, or a large part of it, vests in the assignee and grantee rather than in the patentee. For the great mass of the people must still purchase the patent, or the right to use it, of some one, and must pay as much for it to the assignee as to the patentee. ”

“ But, by allowing the benefit of it to go to the former assignees of only the old patent, the intention of the makers appears to be defeated, and those profited who have not proved any loss or suffering, but, on the contrary, may have already derived great advantages from the assignment. ”

“ It will not, then, be very difficult to calculate what value, during the seven years, will be derived from the right to make and vend machines, when the use of others already in existence is scattered over every section of the country, and they may be employed all the time of the extended patent, without the assignees or grantees ever having paid or being obliged to pay a dollar for that extended use. ”

“ It will tend to plunge into still deeper embarrassment and destitution, by losses in litigation and by deprivation of a further extended sale of their inventions, those whose worth and poverty induced Congress to attempt to aid them. ”

“ Here the great design of the whole section was to extend assistance to an unfortunate and needy class of men of genius, who had failed to realize any profits from their valuable inventions during the first term of their patents. The intention of the makers of this law is usually conceded to have been relief to such patentees, and not to assignees or grantees. ”

“ First, it has been repeatedly decided, that 'a thing which is in the letter of a statute is not within the statute, unless it be within the intention of the makers.' Dwarris on Statutes, 692; Bac. Abr. Statute, T; 2 Instit. ”