Stanley Matthews

“ The investigation of every claim presented involves the adjudication of disputed questions of fact, upon scientific or legal principles, and is, therefore, essentially judicial in its character, and requires the intelligent judgment of a trained body of skilled officials, expert in the various branches of science and art, learned in the history of invention, and proceeding by fixed rules to systematic conclusions. ”

“ While it may be admitted that, so far as the public alone have an interest in the proper performance by the commissioner of his duties in the administration of his bureau, the secretary might satisfy his duty of direction and superintendence by prescribing general rules of conducting the public business and securing, by general oversight, conformity to them ”

“ There are thus two parties to every application for a patent, and more, when, as in case of interfering claims or patents, other private interests compete for preference. The questions of fact arising in this field find their answers in every department of physical science, in every branch of mechanical art. ”

“ If it exists, it is admitted it is only by an implication which discovers an appeal in the power of direction and superintendence. That power does not necessarily, ex vi termini, include a technical appeal; and the principle applies that where a special proceeding is expressly ordained for a particular purpose it is presumably exclusive. It is clear that when the appeal is expressly authorized from the commissioner to the court, either directly or by means of an original suit in equity, another appeal to the secretary on the same matter is excluded ”

“ The supervision of the secretary cannot change those duties nor require them to be performed by another, nor does it authorize him to substitute his discretion and judgment for that of the commissioner, when, by law, the commissioner is required to exercise his own, and when that judgment, unless reversed in the special mode pointed out, by judicial process, is by law the condition on which the right of the claimant is declared to depend. ”

“ It is there enacted that in case a patent is actually, though erroneously, issued, interfering with another, any person interested in any one of them, or in the working of the invention claimed under either of them, may have relief against the interfering patentee, and all parties interested under him, by suit in equity against the owners of the interfering patent ”

“ The general object of that system is to execute the intention of that clause of the constitution, art. 1, § 8, which confers upon congress the power 'to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.' The legislation based on this provision regards the right of property in the inventor as the medium of the public advantage derived from his invention ”

“ The act of 1861, c. 88, (12 St. 246,) created the office of examiners in chief, 'for the purpose of securing greater uniformity of action in the grant and refusal of letters patent,' 'to be composed of persons of competent legal knowledge and scientific ability, whose duty it shall be, on the written petition of the applicant for that purpose being filed, to revise and determine upon the validity of decisions made by examiners when adverse to the grant of letters patent ”

“ The ninth section of the statute provided for the case of interfering applications, which were to be submitted to the decision of arbitrators chosen one by each of the parties, and the third appointed by the secretary of state, the decision or award of two of whom should be final as respects the granting of the patent. ”

“ Arkansas, 9 How. 314; Barnard's Heirs v. Ashley's Heirs, 18 How. 43. Each case must be governed by its own text, upon a full view of all the statutory provisions intended to express the meaning of the legislature. ”