William Strong

“ Yet, both these matters, as well as the originality of the invention, upon which the commissioner must pass, may be contested in suits brought for infringement of the patent. Such defences are allowed by the statute. It must, then, be open to every person, charged with an infringement, to show in his defence that the patentee had abandoned his invention before he obtained his patent.
It has sometimes been said that an invention cannot be held to have been abandoned, unless it was the intention of the inventor to abandon it. ”

“ We have before us the specification, drawings, and model, and what is better we have the original machine, with the testimony of its builder to identify it. That testimony, as well as that of other witnesses, proved clearly that the machine had at first, as it has now, all the elements in combination which compose the combinations claimed in the Woodbury patent. It had a rotary cutter. It had a solid bed under the cutter on which the material to be operated upon was placed, and over which it was moved and fed to the cutters by an endless chain. ”

“ If in regard to an invention claimed to have anticipated his own, he is informed by the defendant's answer of the names and residences of the alleged inventors, or who had prior knowledge of the thing patented, and when and by whom it had bee used, it is sufficient to apprise him of the defense, and to enable him to make all needful inquiries respecting it. ”

“ The counsel of the defendant may well have understood the objection to be that the names had not been furnished in response to the application of the complainant's solicitors, rather than that they had not been set out in the answer. An objection to the examination of a witness should state specifically the ground of the objection, in order that the opposite party may have the opportunity of removing it, if possible. ”

“ The patent law favors meritorious inventors by conditionally conferring upon them for a limited period exclusive rights to their inventions. But it requires them to be vigilant and active in complying with the statutory conditions. ”

“ It is this use of yielding pressure-bars in the combination which constitutes principally, if not wholly, the novelty of the device described in the patent. Planing machines with a solid bed, rotary cutter, and devices for receiving and transmitting the power had been known and in use long before Woodbury claimed to have made his invention. ”

“ It does not require the bed to be of any specified thickness, or constructed in one piece. Its purpose is to furnish a firm and unyielding support to the material when passing under the cutter, and that may be done as well by constructing the bed of two parts as of one. ”