Melville Fuller

“ It not unfrequently happens that, after an application has been carefully examined and compared with previous inventions, and after the claims which such an examination renders admissible have been settled with the acquiescence of the applicant, he, or his assignee, when that investigation is forgotten, and perhaps new officers have been appointed, comes back to the patent-office, and, under the pretense of inadvertence and mistake in the first specification, gets inserted into reissued letters all that had been previously rejected. ”

“ It was held by the assistant commissioner, on appeal, on the 9th of February, that 'as cast brass has not the same crystalline structure as cast iron, the application of Greaves, if so amended in its claims as to restrict him to the use of metal having the same crystalline structure 'as cast-iron,' will not interfere with an application showing and describing 'cast brass,' if the material is of the essence of the invention.' Applicant accordingly so amended, February 9th, the interference was dissolved February 10th, and the patent was issued February 20, 1877. ”

“ The applicant appealed, and, on December 2d, the examiner reported that he had rejected the first claim, which did not then require that the spindle and bearing should be of cast-iron, upon the ground that its non-patentability was res adjudicata so far as the examiner was concerned; and that the second claim was rejected because the substitution of the castmetal shaft for the wrought-metal or steel shaft, before employed, required no invention. ”