ment of reasons, Mr. Justice Bradley delivering the opinion of the Court:

It is hardly necessary to remark that the patentee could not include in a subsequent patent any invention embraced or described in a prior one granted to himself any more than he could an invention embraced or described in a prior patent granted to a third person. Indeed, not so well; because he might get a patent for an invention before patented to a third person in this country if he could show that he was the first and original inventor, and if he should have an interference declared. Now, a mere inspection of the patents referred to above will show that after December, 1862, Norton could not lawfully claim to have a patent for the general [generic] process of stamping letters with a post-mark and canceling stamp at the same time, nor for the general [generic] combination of a post-stamper and blotter in one instrument, nor for the combination of a post-stamper and blotter connected by a cross-bar, for all these things, in one or other specific form, were exhibited in these prior patents.

In McKay, trustee, &c., v. Dibert (19 O. G., 1351), previous to the decision just quoted, there seems to have been a tendency toward a contrary doctrine; but afterward in McKay v. Jackman (22 O. G., 85) the authority of James v. Campbell was accepted, and the Blake patents, owned by McKay, were declared invalid upon the ground that their subject-matter was embraced in a patent previously obtained by the same inventor.

The authorities in the Patent Office are to the same effect as the above. In ex parte Atwood (C. D., 1869, 98) Mr. Commissioner Fisher says:

There would seem to be an obvious impropriety in allowing an inventor to make application and obtain a patent for some trifling improvement, and then come in at any time within two years, as suggested by counsel, and claim another patent covering, broadly, the machine improved and already described in the first patent, so that the first patent would become tributary to the second, and the unlucky purchaser of the first would become an infringer of the second in the hands of his grantor.

In ex parte Lowe (C. D., 1870, 39) Mr. Commissioner Fisher said: The first answer to this clain is that it cannot form the subject of a separate patent. It is not for a distinct and separate part of the thing patented in the original. The furthest point to which the division of inventions has been pushed has been to grant one patent for a process and another for the product of that process. Such patents have with some hesitation been sustained (Goodyear v. Honsinger, 3 Fisher, 150; Goodyear v. Wait, 3 Fisher, 244; Goodyear v. Providence Rubber Co., 2 Fisher, 510); but upon the express ground that this was a matter confided by law to the dis cretion of the Commissioner. But I have never known onė patent to issue for a machine and another for the law or principle by which it operates. The mechanism of applicant is of no value, except to carry out this process. Aside from this it possesses no patentable utility. The process is of no avail unless carried on through the medium of instrumentality. (Morton v. New York Eye Infirmary, 2 Fisher, 324.) It would be idle to sell the patent for the mechanism and withhold that which covers its legitimate and only mode of operation. Separate patents for processes and products have been justified upon the ground that the product might be imported, and a patent for the process would give no protection; but the machine and its mode of operation cannot be separated.

In ex parte Hyde (C. D., 1871, 109), where the several applications were upon the same models and drawings, Mr. Commissioner Leggett reiterates the doctrine announced in the case of Atwood.

It has, it is true, been held that a person can independently patent that which has been shown and described but not claimed in a previous patent upon a concurrent application. Authorities upon this subject are: The Suffolk Co. v. Hayden (3 Wall., 315); Singer & Clark v. Braunsdorf & Weil (7 Blatch., 521), McMillin et al. v. Reese et al. (17 O. G., 1222); Graham v. McCormick et al. (11 Fed. Rep., 859); Hatch v. Moffitt (15 Fed. Rep., 252); ex parte Emerson (17 O. G., 1451); ex parte Derby (26 O. G., 1208). These cases, however, are easily distinguishable from the case of James v. Campbell and that here involved. In all of them that which was independently patented was either a distinct and separate part of the invention or a distinct improvement thereon. It was not substantially the same thing comprehended in the first patent. There was not a mere distinction of breadth or scope of claim. The remedy where a broad claim is omitted is pointed out in the Derby case, supra.

It is clear that if the law prohibits a separate patent for anything but a distinct and separate part of the thing invented, the applicant may not evade the prohibition by reserving the broad claims by a statement in his specific patent; he cannot reserve that which the law forbids him to reserve, and this refers to the intended reservation clauses quoted from each one of the applications.

It has been contended that an applicant should be allowed to divide an origial application the same as he would be allowed to divide an application for the reissue of a patent. While the rule of division may not be so strict in reissues as in original applications, since divisions of a reissue are not open to the objection that they will prolong the term of the patent protection beyond the limitation imposed by law (and such a procedure as Holt's is open to that objection, inasmuch as if a later patent with a broader claim issue, it extends the monopoly, see ex parte Upton, 27 O. G., 99), yet it may be remarked that even upon reissue, as pointed out in Rule 88, the invention must be susceptible of legitimate division-that is, division into distinct and separate parts. In no case can there be more than one patent for one thing. There can be no two valid coexisting patents upon the same invention. The prac tice which has recently sprung up in the Patent Office, or has been revived, of allowing claims to specific devices, claims to species to be patented while the generic claim upon the same species, the claim to the genus, is in controversy and withheld as on denial of its patentabil ity, or on right to the claim being contested, or for other reasons, cannot too emphatically be condemned. Aside from the absurdity of attempting to separate the law or principle from its first illustration, and claiming its broad embodiment in another case, and in a second case, too, as though a subsequent thing, a second patent with a clain to subject-matter which comprehends the claim of a previous patent, has been held, void as being met in such previous patent. This has been held, as shown, even where in the subsequent patent the illustration of the

generic claim was by a different species from that displayed in the previous patent. Where, however, the self-same species displayed in the previous patent is the illustration of the subsequent case, the only difference between the cases being that the first case has a specific claim, while the second has a generic claim, there can be no possible question, for in such case the division is purely imaginary, it is intangible; there is none in fact.

It is apparent that the application "C" of Holt, here on appeal, is unlawful, as are also the other applications above considered, for the reason that all are for divisions of something which is not susceptible of division, and that their subject matter is substantially covered by a patent already granted to Holt.

In this connection attention is directed to such of these cases as may be in interference, and it will be observed that the Commissioner can only declare an interference under certain circumstances. It is not every case which describes and shows, even claims, interfering matter which can be put into interference with another. Thus the Commissioner could not declare an interference with a forfeited application, nor with an abandoned application, nor with an incomplete application. He cannot declare an interference with an unlawful application. The Examiner will note this suggestion.

The case here on appeal is one in which there couid be no proper division; but even in cases where there can be proper division, if the divisions when put together, constitute an organized machine, depending for its operation as such upon all of the distinct and separate divisions, it seems only proper that all the divisions should be pending concurrently, and should issue simultaneously, analogous to divisions of a reissue, in order that, through the interdependence of the parts, by withholding from patent until much later an essential part, or a subaggroupment of parts, or by patenting the separate parts, or sub-aggroupments of parts, seriatim, at long intervals, the term of patent protection, of exclusive right to the machine, may not be extended, or seem to be extended, beyond that limited by law, and deprive the public of right to the machine, or be a menace against such right, after the first patent has expired. The same considerations obtain with respect to method or process and product, and machine and product, and machine and method. Of course, where the product can only be made by one process, the two are so linked together that the invention is one, and there can be no division; but where the product is capable of being effected by various methods, processes, or machines, and division is thus possible, where the method or process, or the machine would produce no other product, the method, process, or machine should not be allowed to go to patent before the product, and the product be subsequently patented, as, in such case, the public may seem to be barred from the use of the method or process, or of the machine, even after the patent upon the same has expired, for the reason that there cannot

be such use without making the product. Proper division between method or process and the product, divisions between machine and the product, and between machine and method should issue simultaneously. If the patent for the method or process, or for the machine, issue first, a subsequent patent upon the product should be refused, and in the case of machine and method, if a patent on the machine issue first, a subsequent patent on the method should be refused, all upon the ground that such subsequent patent would extend or seem to extend the monopoly, and is thus against public policy.

I am not unaware that in the case of McKay v. Dibert (19 O. G., 1351) a subsequent patent upon a product was held valid, although it was fully recognized that this patent prevented unrestrained use by the public of a prior patent upon the machine, which had expired; but, as already said in McKay v. Jackman, the court took a different view, following the authority of James v. Campbell, and, besides, in this same case of McKay v. Dibert the court says:

It is a fair inference from what was decided in Bennett v. Fowler (18 Wall., 445) that the courts have no absolute control over the head of the Patent Office in the exercise of his discretion whether a given invention or improvement shall be embraced in one, two, or more letters patent.

Another reason of appeal is as follows:

1. The Examiner erred in deciding that the amendments filed on December 11 are not authorized by Rule 69.

An examination of the original, the canceled application in this case, (Case C, in which appeal is taken, and which brings this entire record to my attention), and the original drawing canceled December 11, 1883, discloses the fact that this application, as originally filed, contained but three figures of drawing, the first and second figures according to the original description, being chosen and described as the main or preferred type of dust-collecting machine, while the third was stated to be "a longitudinal section of a slightly modified form."

In speaking of the relative advantages of the main and modified forms of the machine (see page 4 of the canceled specification), and referring to figure 3 (now canceled), in which the air trunks I, I, converge toward a single fan J, the applicant declared

I do not herein claim any of the patentable features pertaining to this method of introducing and withdrawing the air current, as I have made them the subject-matter of another application which I have filed.

The other application thus referred to is that upon which the now existing patent of March 6, 1883, No. 273,533, was granted. As figure 3 of this case, under the applicant's own admission, formed a part of the invention covered by the application upon which the patent named was granted, its cancellation from this case was required by the Examiner as a condition precedent to the allowance of the patent, and it was duly canceled, as its present condition shows. Having thus secured the grant of the patent, it is now sought to undo the deliberate acts which certainly formed a consideration upon which the patent was granted,

and not only restore the canceled figure in question (the present figure 3 of the application being also figure 3 of the patent), but add additional figures 1, 2, 4, and 5, all of which are common to this case and to the patent. This cannot be done.

Rule 6 is as follows:

In original applications, which are capable of illustration by drawing or model, all amendments of the model, drawings, or specification, or of additions thereto, must conform to at least one of them as they were at the time of -the filing of the application. Matter not found in either involving a departure from the original invention can be shown or claimed only in a separate application. If the invention does not admit of illustration by drawing or model, amendment of the specification is permitted upon proof satisfactory to the Commissioner that the matter covered by the proposed amendment was a part of the original invention; the affidavits prescribed in Rule 47 may or may not be sufficient.

It makes no difference, therefore, whether an application is a division or not. When an application is once filed, be it a divisional or other original application, it presents a certain state of facts, and when examined on that state of facts the Patent Office has done all that is required, the applicant having received all that a single fee will cover. He may not shift from one state of facts to another, and draw in extraneous matter, whether it be from an entirely independent source, or from a divisional application.

The other reasons of appeal are as follows:

2. The Examiner erred in deciding that the amendments relating to a "series of knocking or hammering devices as operated by lugs projecting from the conveyer" are new matter.

4. The Examiner erred in refusing to examine the fifth claim upon its merits.

The Examiner is mistaken in holding that only a single knocker is referred to in the parent case, since on page 2 in line 23 of the original canceled specification I find the expression "one or more knockers." This, however, is of no importance in view of the condition of the case as above set forth.

Regarding the form of the claims in some of the cases, particularly the form of the claim in Case E, attention is called to ex parte Demming (26 O. G., 1207). Such expressions as "means" and "mechanism" are generally objectionable as being indefinite. They are always objection able if by their use the claim itself does not distinguish what is believed to be new. The description of an invention by a specification alone is not now, as formerly, all sufficient; but the description must be supplemented by a specific and well-defined claim to the part, improvement, or combination which the inventor regards as his property. The aim, end, and purpose of the specification, under the present statute, is to describe the invention sought to be covered by the patent, and the manner of making, constructing, and using the same. The aim, the end, the purpose of the claim is to point out particularly and distinctly define the invention to be secured to the individual. The claim is the measure of the patent, and the day has passed when the courts will