Decisions Relating to Patents

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United States Circuit Court.--Northern District of New York:. united states stamping company VS. jewett et al. Blatchford, J.: 1. Patent to E. A. Heath, No. 119,705, granted October 10, 1871, not anticipated by invention of Weber, the proofs failing to show beyond a reasonable doubt that Weber was prior to Heath. 2. Where the decree in a former suit against one license of a patentee was for a simple dismissal of the bill a claim that the plaintiff is estopped from suing another licensee will not be entertained. 3. Where a patent has been allowed and ordered to issue, and an assignment has then been made authorizing the Commissioner to issue patent to assignee, and patent issue to inventor, the assignment not having been recorded until after the issue of the patent, Held that the legal right to the patent became vested in the assignee on the recording of the assignment. Our Trade with China. Recent official reports show an encouraging increase in American trade with China, whose vast and undeveloped markets offer enormous opportunities for our manufacturers and farmers. A few years ago wheaten bread was all but unknown in China. The multitudes of returning Chinamen carry home with them not only a knowledge of wheat but a preference for it. One steamship from San Francisco carried to China, last year, 1,400 tons of flour; and the entire shipment for 1879 was 235,789 barrels. The vast wheat fields of the Pacific coast are likely soon to find an ample market for their products among the millions of the Celestial Empire. During the same year California found in China a market for half her quicksilver product, or 36,696 flasks. Of other products the total shipment from the country was not large, but the variety indicates great possibilities of future development. The exports to China for the year, the last for which official reports have been published, included clocks, to the value of $50,397; cottons, colored, $270,000; cottons, un-colored, $1,302,000; drugs and chemicals, $13,700; glassware, $14,000; silver bulHon, $1,831,000; machinery, $9,000; other iron manufactures, $9,000; firearms, $17,000; lamps, $22,000; kerosene, $690,000; ordnance stores, $9,000; provisions, such as bacon and other meats, butter and cheese, etc., $42,000; refined sugar, $7,000; tobacco, $52,000; clothing, $10,000. To Render Ivort Flexible.--Ivory is readily rendered quite fiexible by immersion in a solution of pure phosphoric acid (specific gravity 1*13) until it loses, or partially loses, its opacity, when it is washed in clean cold water and dried. In this state it is as fiexible as leather, but gradually hardens by exposure to dry air. Immersion in hot water, however, restores its softness and pUancy. The following method may also be employed: Put the ivory to soak in three ounces nitric acid mixed with fifteen ounces water, In three or four days the ivory will be soft.

SA Supplements Vol 11 Issue 265suppThis article was published with the title “Patents” in SA Supplements Vol. 11 No. 265supp (), p. 73
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican01291881-4230dsupp

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