William Strong

“ We cannot think the advance which the patentee made upon that can be called invention. Leaving the links open after they have been sprung into closed links, there being no novelty in the links themselves, cannot be patentable. It is nothing more than the exercise of ordinary mechanical skill. If in one of the complainants' chains, after the links had been joined, a person should solder the spirals together or to the closed rings, it could hardly be maintained that a new chain had been invented. ”

“ The well-known serpent bracelet was such an open spiral, such a double link, and several of them, sprung together alternately with closed links, would have formed a chain identical in principle with that of the patentee. There certainly is nothing patentable in merely reducing the size of the bracelet so as to adapt it to use in a necklace. The record also contains evidence that other spiral rings or links made of gold tubing, some of them open and some closed, by soldering, were made before 1873. ”

“ The form of the link, when made of gold tubing, is all that is attempted to be patented. The constituents are not. The patentee has testified that as long as he had known anything about the manufacture of jewelry he had known tubing to be used in the art; that for many years he had known shot put into the ends of such tubing, and that for a number of years he had known links formed of tubing with shotted ends. We think, therefore, the evidence sufficiently establishes that the second claim is void for want of novelty in the alleged invention. ”