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In the last number of the " Scientific American" you commented justly on the attempt made by the Patent Office, to retain the whole fee of a rej'ected applicant, who withdraws his claims and relinquishes his model. No jther views than those you have taken can, in sober earnest, be entertained of the plain meaning of the law as you have quoted it. flow it ever entered into the mind of the late able Commissioner of Patents, to change the established policy of the Patent Office, and bo retain the $20, which has been returned by every previous Commissioner of Patents, ac-:ording to the plain and simple meaning of the law, is more than I can comprehend. He surely consulted some person, who advised the change, and suggested the new policy. As you have pointed out the conflic-tion of the new order with the law, let me endeavor to show, by a few brief arguments, that the new decision is illogical, so far as it regards the correct mode of reasoning, to find out the meaning of what is obscure in some laws ; in other words, to arrive by reasoning at what was the intent of the law makers who enacted the laws. It certainly never entered the mind of a single Senator, nor member of Congress, who constructed, revised, or voted for the new Patent Law of 1836, to charg , incongruously, only $10 for the examination of an application for a rejected patent, and no less than $20 for that ot a simple caveat ; yet this is what the new order of the Patent Office does. Reasoning in this manner to discover the intent ot the enactors ot that Act, "a mind possessed of but a very small amount of logical acumen would at once conclude that the new policy ot the Pa" tent Office was wrong, for the examination of the application for a patent, upon which a caveat had been filed, is no more difficult nor troublesome than one upon which no caveat papers had been filed. By no rule of logic or reason could we conclude that itever was the-intent—that it ever entered the mind of the makers of the Act ot 1836—that $30 should be charged for examining and rejecting an application for a patent upon which a caveat had been previously filed. The letter of the law, therefore, the rules of logic, and the reflections of the mind, lead us to conclude, that, as the patent law says " " every case," when an application for a patent is rejected, twenty dollars are returnable to him who withdraws his application and re-, linquishes his model. JUNIUS REDIVIVUS. New York.
