Patent law

“ Either may be pointed out; but, if the patent is not confined to that particular tool or machine, the use of the others would be an infringement, the general process being the same. A process is a mode of treatment of certain materials to produce a given result. It is an act, or a series of acts, performed upon the subject-matter to be transformed and reduced to a different state or thing. If new and useful, it is just as patentable as is a piece of machinery. In the language of the patent law, it is an art. ”

“ The inventor of the latest addition is entitled to full protection, and if the telephone company buys that invention it is entitled to all the rights which the inventor had. All that the patent law requires is that when a patent expires the invention covered by that patent shall be free to every one, and not that the public has the right to the use of any other invention, the patent for which has not expired, and which adds to the utility and advantage of the instrument made as the result of the combined inventions. ”

“ This clarity is essential to promote progress, because it enables efficient investment in innovation. A patent holder should know what he owns, and the public should know what he does not. For this reason, the patent laws require inventors to describe their work in “full, clear, concise, and exact terms,” 35 U.S.C. § 112 as part of the delicate balance the law attempts to maintain between inventors, who rely on the promise of the law to bring the invention forth, and the public, which should be encouraged to pursue innovations, creations, and new ideas beyond the inventor’s exclusive rights. ”

“ We are not sure but that to make any Patent-Law tolerably just, special provision should be made for proof of simultaneous discovery, and either compensation to all the discoverers by the patentees, or full liberty to them to make use of their discovery. ”

“ One royalty to one patentee for one sale is enough under our patent law as written. And this proposition can be stated with knowledge that there is not a single sentence, clause, phrase or word in the entire legislative history of the 1952 recodification which could have led Congress to believe that it was being asked by means of the provisions enacted to enlarge the scope of a patentee's exclusive right to 'make, use, and vend' the thing patented. ”

“ The second and principal question in the case raises an important question of practice under the patent law, and deserves to be seriously considered by this court.
It is undoubtedly the common practice of the United States Circuit Courts, in actions at law, on questions of priority of invention, where a patent under consideration is attempted to be invalidated by a prior patent, to take the evidence of experts as to the nature of the various mechanisms or manufactures described in the different patents produced, and as to the identity or diversity between them ”

“ That is admitted, but the words, as used in the connection here found, with the right simply to use the thing patented, not the exclusive right, which would be a monopoly, necessarily refer to the patented machine and not to the invention; and, indeed, it is in that sense that the expression is to be understood generally throughout the patent law, when taken in connection with the right to use, in contradistinction to the right to make and sell.
The 'thing patented' is the invention ”

“ The decision of the commissioner of patents in granting a patent is not conclusive that the inventor is the first and original inventor, but only prima facie, that is, in the absence of other evidence to the contrary. Consequently, the question of patentability in every case may be reexamined in the courts. In the early days of administering the patent law an inventor often applied to a court for an injunction to prevent an infringer from continuing his work. ”

“ We claim that there can be no patent in the United States founded upon the material used, unless where a new combination of materials is made use of, and then it comes under that clause of the patent law which authorizes a patent for any new composition of matter. ”

“ To escape the incessant and intense competition which exists in every department of industry, it is not strange that persons should seek the cover of the patent act, for any happy effort of contrivance or construction; nor that patents should be very frequently employed to obstruct invention, and to deter from legitimate operations of skill and ingenuity. Thid danger was foreseen, and provided for, in the patent act. The patentee is obliged, by law, to describe his invention, in such full, clear, and exact terms, that from the description, the invention may be constructed and used. ”

“ The proposition so earnestly insisted upon that while this may be true, it does not fairly consider the refiex detriment to come to the rights of property of the inventor within the patent law as a result of not recognizing the right to continue to apply the patent law as to objects which have passed beyond its scope, is obviously not one susceptible of judicial cognizance. ”

“ It is the right of the patentee and his representatives to enlarge or restrict the claim, so as to give it validity and secure the invention. [4]
Patentable subjects, as defined by the patent law, [5] are 'any new and useful art, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement on any art, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter.' A machine may be new, and the product or manufacture proceeding from it may be old. In that case the former would be patentable and the latter not. The machine may be substantially old and the product new. ”

“ Any assignment or transfer, short of one of these, is a mere license, giving the licensee no title in the patent, and no right to sue at law in his own name for an infringement.'
We see no reason to qualify in any way the language of these opinions. While it is sometimes said that each claim of a patent is a separate patent, it is true only to a limited extent. ”

“ When we consider that there are at the present moment 11,369 Patents in force, most of them as invalid as that to which I have referred, and acting as a restriction on manufacturers, we may form some idea of what the community at large has to pay for the luxury of a Patent-Law. ”

“ Where a patent is claimed for such a discovery, it should state the component parts of the new manufacture claimed with clearness and precision, and not leave the person attempting to use the discovery to find it out 'by experiment.' The law requires the applicant for a patent-right to deliver a written description of the manner and process of making and compounding his new-discovered compound. The art is new; and therefore persons cannot be presumed to be skilled in it, or to anticipate the result of chemical combinations of elements not in daily use. ”

“ If so, the American patent expired with the foreign patent, and thereby the American public became entitled to use the invention from the time the foreign public were permitted to use it. Congress, in effect, by the existing law, says to an inventor seeking to enjoy the exclusive use in this country of his invention for the full term prescribed by law: 'If your invention has not been introduced into public use in the United States for more than two years, you may, upon complying with the conditions prescribed, obtain an American patent, and you may, if you can, obtain a foreign patent. ”

“ The patentee's exercise of the patent right is in accordance with law, confirmed as monopoly and its negative impact on competition needs to be eliminated or reduced. Article 49 Where a national emergency or any extraordinary state of affairs occurs, or public interests so require, the patent administration department under the State Council may grant a compulsory license for exploitation of an invention patent or utility model patent. ”

“ To be sure, the patent legislation does not in so many words formulate this doctrine of fair dealing between assignor and assignee. But patent legislation, like other legislation and indeed like all compositions, impliedly contains presuppositions which need not be spelled out precisely because they are taken for granted. The fair intendment of a patent assignment authorized by Congress is as much to be respected as the same meaning explicitly stated. Patent legislation is part of the great body of law. ”

“ The principal invention is in both, and, if the American patent contains additional improvements, this fact cannot save the patent from the operation of the law which is invoked, if it is subject to that law at all. A patent cannot be exempted from the operation of the law by adding some new improvements to the invention ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is no doubt the patent laws sometimes fail to do justice to an individual who may, with the light he had before him, have exhibited inventive talent of a high order, and yet be denied a patent by reason of antecedent devices which actually existed, but not to his knowledge, and are only revealed after a careful search in the Patent Office. But the statute (§ 4886) is inexorable. It denies the patent, if the device were known or used by others in this country before his invention. Congress having created the monopoly, may put such limitations upon it as it pleases. ”

“ It is upon these two points that the question of infringement depends. In considering them it is important to bear in mind that the patent is for a combination merely, in which all the elements were known and open to public use. No one of them is claimed to be the invention of the patentee. He does not claim them himself as separate inventions. It is simply a new combination of old and well-known devices for the accomplishment of a new and useful result that is claimed to be the invention secured by the patent. ”

“ Effective support to the proposition that nothing but invention or discovery will entitle an applicant to a patent is also found in the reported decisions of the circuit courts, as appears from the following citations. Judge Story held, many years ago, that the mere application of an old process, machine, or device to a new use was not patentable,-that there must be some new process or some new machinery to produce the result, in order that the supposed inventor may properly have a patent for the alleged improvement. ”