264 
BETTs’s PATENT CAPSULES. 
Mr. Daueeney said Mr. Betts had commenced proceedings against both. 
Mr. Hills said the retailers were the innocent parties; not so the manufacturer who 
knowingly infringed the patent. He should like to hear Mr. Flux’s opinion upon the 
subject, and if the question would be tried. 
Mr. Flux (solicitor) said that as Mr. Hills had asked him whether the suits which 
Mr. Betts had commenced were to be tried, he thought it only right to say that a great 
many gentlemen had done as Mr. Daubeney had done. They had taken eminent advice, 
and acting on it they had compromised their suits by paying handsome sums and costs! 
thereby affording infinite encouragement to Mr. Betts to pursue that system from one 
end of the country to the other. He could not with unbounded confidence say that these 
suits could be successfully defended, but he could say that he defended them with a fair 
amount of confidence as to the ultimate result. According to the reductio ad absurdum 
of the proposition, Mr. Betts might have a prima facie case in a court of equity, so that 
he might possibly succeed in getting a decree; but if he did, it would be, to the best of 
his (Mr. Flux’s) belief, but a naked decree, without costs, against the defendant, who 
would perhaps have to pay them himself, because they would be reduced to such a ridi¬ 
culously small amount. Mr. Betts ought not to have gone to court systematically, as he 
had done, with such a large batch of claims more than twenty-five claims all struck off 
in blank as it were, the only change being the substitution of one gentleman’s name for 
another. So much for Mr. Betts’s form of proceeding. But now, looking at the whole 
matter, he should be able to prove that which perhaps was unknown to those profes¬ 
sional gentlemen who had advised on this matter. Mr. Betts had not a patent for cap¬ 
sules, but for the metal of which capsules could be made. He should be able 
to prove conclusively that Mr. Betts had not only sold large quantities of his 
metal, but millions of capsules made of his metal, without any distinguishing 
mark being put upon them; and it was within his knowledge that Mr. Betts’s 
own agents could not tell, when a capsule was placed in his hands, whether it 
was made by him or not. Mr. Betts’s confidential agent was one day in his (Mr. Flux’s) 
office; and by way of parenthesis he might say that he believed at that time they had 
come to an amicable termination of the matter, and that it would have been a drawn 
battle and peace would have been established; but it was impossible to say in connection 
with these matters when they had arrived at a conclusion, and he now believed they 
would have to fight to the end. On the occasion referred to, they discussed the possi¬ 
bility of distinguishing between a genuine and what was not a genuine article. He (Mr. 
i lux) had had supplied to him, and with the means of proving it, Betts’s plate and his 
capsules. He placed them in Mr. Campbell’s hands, and said to him, “ Tell me, are they 
Mr. Betts’s manufacture or not ?” Mr. Campbell turned them over and over again, and 
said, “If I had a microscope, perhaps I could tell.” He then said to him, « Then if that 
be the case, tell me how an outsider can say that these are Betts’s capsules or not.” To 
which he replied, “Perhaps they cannot tell.” He repeated his question, “Tell me, 
without a microscope, are they Betts’s manufacture or not ?” and he replied, “ They are 
not.” Upon which he (Mr. Flux) said,. “ Then I can prove most distinctly that they are.” 
how, in the course of such a proceeding as that, and in his having sown broadcast over 
this and foreign countries capsules of his manufacture without the slightest distinguish¬ 
ing mark, it occurred to him (Mr. Flux) that to prove that the capsules proceeded upon 
were an infringement of the patent would be a very difficult thing for Mr. Betts to do ; 
and at any rate it would be capable for the defendants to show that in selling these cap¬ 
suled articles they acted in perfect innocence, and that they were in a trap with Mr. Betts 
himself had laid for all the world—he did not mean to say openly and purposely—but 
which, nevertheless, was in effect a trap into which the retailers had fallen. In the face 
of that, and according to the law of justice which he had ever seen administered in the 
Court of Chancery, he could not see how the defendants could be cast in costs. At any 
rate, he had a strong conviction that Mr. Betts would have to pay for it. So much, then, 
for the matter that had been referred to him by Mr. Hills’s question ; and now he would 
say a few words with reference to the proposition before the meeting. Mr. Betts’s patent 
was not, as he had before said, for capsules, but for the metal of which they were made. 
In the ordinary letail trade he did not think they could take up an article in any one of 
their shops that might not, for what they knew, expose them to a Chancery suit in half- 
a-dozen different directions. The capsule on the top of the bottle might expose them to 
a suit in Chancery, not because of its being a capsule, but because it was made of a given 
