William Burnham Woods

“ The improvement described in the appellant's patent consists, therefore, in simply taking a material well known and long used in the making of pavements, to-wit, wooden blocks set vertically, and with them constructing a pavement in a method well known and long used. It is plain, therefore, that the improvement described in the patent was within the mental reach of any one skilled in the art to which the patent relates, and did not require invention to devise it, but only the use of ordinary judgment and mechanical skill. ”

“ It was there said that the design of the patent laws was to reward those who make some substantial discovery or invention which adds to our knowledge or makes a step in advance in the useful arts, and that it was never the object of those laws to grant a monopoly for every trifling device, every shadow of a shade of an idea, which would naturally and spontaneously occur to any skilled mechanic or operator in the ordinary progress of manufactures. ”

“ The alleged combination consists in a pavement formed by blocks of wood cut from the trunks or branches of trees, set with their fibers vertical upon a bed of broken stone, sand, or gravel, the spaces between the blocks being filled with sand or gravel. The kind of wood of which the blocks are composed, and their length and diameter, are immaterial. The placing of the blocks with their fibers vertical is shown to be an old method long antedating the patent, and is so obviously the only practicable mode of placing them that its suggestion in the patent cannot be called invention. ”