Nathan Clifford

“ Where a person has discovered a new and useful principle in a machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, he may employ other persons to assist in carrying out that principle, and if they, in the course of experiments arising from that employment, make discoveries ancillary to the plan and preconceived design of the employer, such suggested improvements are in general to be regarded as the property of the party who discovered the original principle, and they may be embodied in his patent as part of his invention. ”

“ No 'new manufacture' was invented by any one. Long-fibre paper, which, and which alone, collar paper is, had been long invented. Long-fibre paper in itself was not patentable, and giving to it any particular thickness, polish, or tint by the same means that had been before tried to give to such paper thickness, polish, or tint, could not impart a patentable character to it. Collar paper did at most but combine in a higher degree than they were before combined in paper, certain well-known characteristics of paper. ”

“ Because it appears that the patentee is not the original and first inventor either of the paper or of the process by which the paper is made, or of the collar which is denominated a new manufacture.
Articles of manufacture may be new in the commercial sense when they are not new in the sense of the patent law. New articles of commerce are not patentable as new manufactures, unless it appears in the given case that the production of the new article involved the exercise of invention or discovery beyond what was necessary to construct the apparatus for its manufacture or production. ”

“ The invention meant to be patented by the original patent was the making of collars of paper prepared with animal sizing. The reissue is for making collars of any kind of paper that is suitable for the purpose, and suitable principally because not prepared with animal sizing. The reissue is thus plainly, palpably, undeniably for an invention radically different from any described or even alluded to in the patent. If this is so the Gray patent falls dead. To stab it further is worse than useless. ”

“ The principle of Gray's invention consists in the process of folding a collar of paper or of cloth and paper by making a defined curved line, exactly located or fixed, at or near the outset, by being indented into the material with a suitable instrument or broken into it over the edge of a pattern, and turning the collar over on or following this line; whereby certain important advantages in the collar itself may be easily and conveniently secured. ”

“ Hard stock, it is now said, must be used in larger proportions than is required for other descriptions of paper, and that the pulp must be subjected for a greater length of time to the long-beating process, so that the fibre shall be not only long but fine, in order that the paper may be strong, smooth, and even, and that the fibre shall become bedded in the thickness of the paper so as not to mar the surface. ”

“ The remark of the patentee, that 'my invention is not confined to any particular style of turn-over collars,' must be understood as relating to the fashion of the collars, and not to the materials of which they are made. Style is contradistinguished from fabric or material.
The claims of the patent, moreover, are limited to the application of the invention to collars of paper or of cloth and paper combined, the three claims corresponding respectively to the three parts of the invention, as set forth in the foregoing specification. ”

“ Long-fibre paper has been a common article of manufacture in the United States longer than I can remember. It has been known in the market as bank-note, bond-paper, cartridge-paper, drawing-paper, silk-paper, tissue, manillas, and tissue-paper.
'There is no essential difference in the process and means used to produce collar-paper, that I know of, and the process and means employed to produce other thick, strong, pliable long-fibre papers which I have enumerated. The same machinery answers for one as the other. ”

“ Doubt upon that subject cannot be entertained, but persons employed, as much as employers, are entitled to their own independent inventions, and if the suggestions communicated constitute the whole substance of the improvement the rule is otherwise, and the patent, if granted to the employer, is invalid, because the real invention or discovery belongs to the person who made the suggestions. ”

“ I could explain to you much better by seeing you than by writing. Just please see if you understand me this time. It is so difficult for me to explain by letter. I wish I could see you.'
'I am not positive that what you make will be just what I want when finished. ”

“ And as the demand for the thicker and more tenacious and pliable papers is comparatively limited, and the manufacture of each of its branches, to some degree a special business, there are much fewer machines for making it, and much fewer makers of it than there are machines for making ordinary paper and makers of it. ”

“ The management of the beating engine is left to the skill and judgment of the foreman in charge. The knives may be sharp or dull, the roll may be closely pressed upon the bed-plate or slightly elevated, the bars and knives may have the angles which they make with each other altered, so that they either cut off sharply, like the blades of scissors, or tear the rags more slowly as they pass between them. The duration of the beating also varies according to the nature of the pulp, the length of fibre required, the condition of the knives, &c. ”

“ When we wanted fancy collars we would prick the Bristol board or paper. The holes looked like stitches. Sometimes we would paint them pink or blue, or in stripes, so as to be like colored linen or linen, with blue or pink stripes. The fancy collars were worn, of course, only on the stage. But the white ones, our men-who as a class are lazy fellows-would sometimes wear in the street. On the stage we could, with care, wear the collars several times. In the street, only once or twice. We got the Bristol boards and paper out of which we made these collars at Rayner's, a stationer, in the Bowery. ”

“ For long-fibre paper the knives used in the process of pulping must be dull, and the process of beating must be long-forty-four hours being commonly given. For the short-fibre paper, the knives may be dull and the process of beating may be short-four hours suffices. To produce a thick paper, the device of doubling the sheet, where the machine is a cylinder mac ine, has long been resorted to. ”

“ It is strong; and, generally speaking, the heavier the paper is the stronger it is also. I have seen better paper than the complainant's collar-paper made at Pennypack, Pennsylvania, when I was an apprentice. It was called thick writing-paper, and was used for ledgers. There is no quality of toughness, capacity of being turned without cracking, or thickness, which makes the collar-paper substantially different, so far as I see, from the qualities of other papers long in use in this country. ”

“ After the 'stock'-best rags or what else-is sorted and cut, it is generally cleaned by boiling, and finally put, with the requisite quantity of water, into the 'beating engine,' where it is beaten or ground into pulp. The beating engine is simply a vat divided into two compartments by a longitudinal partition, which, however, leaves an opening at either end. In one compartment a cylinder revolves, called the 'roll,' its longitudinal axis being at right angles to the length of the vat. ”

“ In all parts of the subject, however, there is great room for skill; the thicker, more tenacious, and more sightly paper being produced in different degrees of excellence according as the proper 'stock' is used, as the paper-making machines are good, and as they are scientifically used. ”

“ The pulp is carried by the motion of the wire beneath a succession of rollers, the first light and the last heavier, until a heavy roller covered with felt carries it off the wire by its adhering to the felt, and it then passes through heated rollers until it comes out pressed into paper. ”

“ I. As to the Evans patent and reissue, the fabric for making shirt-collars. Paper being made out of linen, among other things, and some sorts of paper being more stiff or more tough than others, it had been observed long prior to the grant of any patent on the subject, that shirt-collars could be made out of the stiffer or more tough sort of papers, and that the collars, if used but for a short time and not closely looked at, might pass for linen collars. ”

“ The increasing cost of the backing and the difficulty attending the manufacture, render the collars intended to be worn, as a general thing but once, too expensive to answer the purpose they were designed for. ”