THE LAW OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY. 377 



easily be gathered from the court reports of the past two years, show- 

 ing very clearly that inventors need to be on their guard against so- 

 liciting patents for trivialities. 



That an applicant for a patent must frankly and fully disclose his 

 invention, but that if his description is, through accident or mistake, 

 insufficient, he may have a " reissue " correcting the mistake, is famil- 

 iar, yet not so well understood but that new ex23lanations have been 

 found needful. The volume published last summer of Justice Clif- 

 ford's decisions contains a case in which he assigns three reasons for 

 requiring fullness and accuracy in the description : 1, That the Gov- 

 ernment may know what they have granted, and what will become 

 public property when the term of the monopoly expires ; 2. That 

 licensed persons, desiring, during the term, to practice the invention, 

 may know how to make, construct, and use it ; 3. That other and sub- 

 sequent inventors may know what part of the field of invention re- 

 mains unoccupied. 



The privilege of reissue has no doubt been abused. A glaring case 

 was presented in the Supreme Court. An inventor applied for a pat- 

 ent, but the Commissioner thought that he claimed too much, and 

 refused letters unless the applicant would omit a part. He did so, and 

 a patent was issued for the invention, the description being limited ac- 

 cording to the Commissioner's" view. Several years afterward, he 

 applied for a reissue, to include the feature of his invention formerly 

 rejected, and, through some error, it was granted. The Supreme 

 Court Judges say that this, though it has <!>ften been done, is a fraud 

 on the public. Reissues can only be allowed to cure errors attribu- 

 table to inadvertence, accident, or mistake. What was omitted from 

 the first patent, because the inventor consented to abandon it, can never 

 be lawfully brought in afterward by a reissue. 



Several lawsuits have culminated in a group of decisions which, if 

 they shall be sustained by the Supreme Court, will open the way to an 

 efficient judicial remedy, whenever Government officers assume to use 

 a patented invention. The English idea has long been that a patent 

 is a monopoly or privilege which the Crown though forbidden to 

 grant monopolies as freely as might be done centuries ago may give 

 to a favored person. Hence it is there considered that the privilege 

 does not prevail against Government. The Crown does not engage 

 not to use the improvement. Upon the American view, a patent is a 

 compact made with the inventor to induce him to disclose his inven- 

 tion for the public benefit ; as a reward for which he receives an ex- 

 clusive privilege which is in the nature of property. As respects 

 many important inventions, the privilege would have little value if 

 not good against Government, for the reason that the thing is only 

 useful in Government business. AVhat would be the worth of a patent 

 for articles useful only in the army and navy, for a revenue or postage 

 stamp, or the like, if Government might use the invention free ? Offi- 



