Recent Decisions Relating to Patents

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Supreme Court of the United States. PECK, ADMINISTRATOR, VS. COLLINS.--PATENT DRIVE WELL. --REISSUE. Mr. .Justice Bradley delivered the opinion of the court. 1. Upon a surrender of a patent for reissue, an interference declared thereon, a decision against the patentee, and subsequent refusal of a reissue, the patent becomes destitute of validity and absolutely void. 2. Under the law as it stood in 1866 a patent surrendered for reissue was canceled in law as well when the a pplication was rejected as when it was granted. The patentee was in the same circnms tances as he would have been if his original application for a patent had been rejected. 3. Under tbe law as it then stood surrender of a patent was an abandonment of it, and an applicant for reissue took upon himself the risk of getting a reissue or of losing all. The question of his right to any patent at all was opened anew the same as upon an original applicatio.n for a patent. 4. Whatever may have been the effect of the new clause introduced in the law by the act of July 8, 1870, that "the surrender shall take effect upon the isstie of the amended patent " in cases where a reissue is refused for other reasons, it would still seem that if the patentee's title to the invention is disputed and adjudged against him, the effect of such a decision should be as fatal to his original patent as to his ri ght to a reissue. In error to the Court of Appeals of the Stte of New United States Circuit Court.--Dlstrlct of Maryland. BOOTH et al. VS. SEEVEKS et al. Bond and Morris, Judges : The recovery of p ro fi ts and damages from the m an ufac-turers of an infringi ng machine debars the patentee from recovering from a user for the use of the same machine. STATEMENT OF THE CASE. [This suit was brought under reissue patent No. 1,826, granted to complainant on November 29, 1864, for improvement in grain separators, for the use of a m achine, which was one of a num ber, for the manu facture of which the complainant had recovered from the makers.] The Railway Xell-tale. An ingenious machine, called the " tell-tale," has been introduced recently on the Erie Railroad. It registers the speed of trains, when where they stop, and how long. It is used especially for freight trains, and is fastened at either end of small cabooses or at the side of large cabooses, about four and a half feet from the floor. It was adopted because freight trains frequently exceeded the prescribed rate of speed. They would run very fast for some distances, and then take things comfortably for a time.

SA Supplements Vol 11 Issue 283suppThis article was published with the title “Patents” in SA Supplements Vol. 11 No. 283supp (), p. 357
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican06041881-4518bsupp

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