Noah Haynes Swayne

“ Justice Nelson said, 'The patentee may forfeit his right to the invention if he constructs it and vends it to others to use, or if he uses it publicly himself in the ordinary way of a public use of a machine at any time prior to two years before he makes his application for a patent. ”

“ The disclaimer and claim of the patent are as follows:--
'Separately considered, I do not claim a metallic flexible screw-ring or cap, C, for holding a cover on a preserve-jar, nor an external gasket receiving-shoulder upon preserve-jar, except when such gasket-shoulder is at the top of a continuous glass screw; neither do I claim the combination of a screw-ring cap with a packing-ring, so applied to a jar that a portion or the whole of such packing-ring is exposed within the jar, nor when the gasket-shoulder is at the base of the glass screw, as in my patent of 1858 ”

“ In the mean time, large interests had grown up in the way of the manufacture and sale of jars substantially the same with Mason's, and of others more or less like it. He was stimulated to make his application by seeing such jars in the market. He had seen them before Fitzgerald advised him finally to get a patent. Even then he failed to give any directions upon the subject. He reached his conclusion subsequently. Large amounts of money must then have been invested in the business of making and selling such jars by various persons. ”

“ Prior to the beginning of the year 1868 he had sold of the jars with glass tops from two hundred and fifty to four hundred gross, making the minimum thirty-six thousand. Before the same period, he had sold a large number of those with the metallic top, and otherwise the same in construction. ”