The effort to convict the applicant of fraud in his statement of account has not seriously affected the statement. Very few patentees keep their accounts in such manner as to easily and certainly make a statement of the exact income derived from their patents. This is especially true where the patentee manufactures under his patent. Very few statements thus made, however honest the patentee may be, are fortunate enough to escape the criticism of persons adversely interested. The effort of the applicant to prevent the exposure of his accountbooks to the inspection of his opponents is seized upon to establish the charge of fraudulent attempt to deceive the Commissioner. His reluctance in producing his books is easily explained without supposing that it was for the purpose of aiding deception. Very few firms are willing to open their books, expose prices, names of correspondents, localities of trade, &c., to their competitors in business; and to insist upon such exposure, except where fraud is patent, is a species of intrusive impudence that meets but little favor in the courts, and should have less in the Patent Office. The books, however, have all been produced at the hearing, but nothing has been shown by them to disprove the substantial correctness of the applicant's statement. The extension will be granted. GEORGE W. MORSE. IN THE MATTER OF THE APPLICATION OF GEORGE W. MORSE FOR THE EXTENSION OF HIS PATENT, NO. 20,214, GRANTED MAY 11, 1858, FOR AN IMPROVEMENT IN CARTRIDGE-CASES. (Decided May 11, 1872.) Loyalty or disloyalty of an applicant during the late war as affecting the question of want of due diligence in producing an invention-Want of diligence-Novelty. It is a settled rule that loyalty or disloyalty during the late war does not affect the status of an applicant in the Patent Office, except as it may pertain to the matter of "due diligence." The Office can make no discrimination between parties in the Union and confederate services, respectively. As between two cartridge-cases—both of which are gas-tight, central-fire, capable of being recharged and recapped, and made of substantially the same parts-it does not constitute a patentable difference to place on the outside of the shell the sliding cup which was formerly on the inside of the shell. LEGGETT, Commissioner: The invention described in this patent is a cartridge-case, having a tige within, so arranged as to present a central point to act as an anvil on which to explode the fulminate, an annular shoulder to abut against the gun, and an expansible cartridge-closer arranged so as to slide longitudinally within the cartridge-shell. The object of the invention was to secure a gas-tight, central-fire cartridge. The extension is opposed on two grounds: 1. That it was not new when patented. 2. That the applicant has not used due diligence to introduce his invention into public use. The applicant is accused of abandoning his invention at the beginning of the late war, and of going into the service of the leaders of the rebellion. It is proven that just before the Government troops took possession of Alexandria, in the spring of 1861, the applicant left his family in Washington and went to Richmond; remained in Richmond until after the battle of Manassas Gap; then went to Nashville, Tennessee, in charge of machinery for making his cartridges, which machinery had been stolen by the rebels from the Government works at Harper's Ferry. At Nashville, by the influence of General Polk, be secured an appointment in a rebel armory that was being established by the governor of Tennessee. The capture of Fort Donelson and Nashville by the national forces prevented the accomplishment of this design, and he was forced back with the machinery first to Chattanooga, and later to Atlanta, and then to Greenville, South Carolina. At the latter place he entered into contract with the governor of South Carolina to manufacture arms, and actually made arms for a company of rebel soldiers, as he declares, for State use, to keep the peace, which probably then meant to enforce the Confederate conscript laws. The applicant shows that at the breaking out of the war he owned, in Louisiana, property said to be worth $150,000 or more; that this comprised about all the property he owned anywhere; and he swears that his only reason for going south was to save this property from confiscation. It has often been decided by the Commissioner that the question of loyalty or disloyalty during the late war could have no possible effect upon the status of an applicant in the Patent Office, except so far as it might pertain to the matter of "due diligence." The law requires that an applicant for the extension of a patent shall show that he has used due diligence during its original term in his efforts to introduce his invention into public use and to get therefrom full consideration for the time, ingenuity, and money expended in developing the same. If, during the time that he should have been thus engaged he chose to abandon his business and enter the rebel service, and spend four years of the lifetime of his patent in efforts to destroy his Government, the Office has in several such cases held that there had been such lack of "due diligence" as to demand a refusal of extension; that is, the Office has accepted proof of service in the Union Army as a proper excuse for abandoning a patent during such time, while it has regarded such service in the rebel army as a culpable neglect of business. This is as far as any Commissioner has taken the question of loyalty to the Government into consideration in any decision. There can be no doubt but if Morse had remained at the North during the war and applied himself to the manufacture of his cartridge he could have made a large profit; but, as a business transaction, was he bound to do so? His property was all in the South. The confederate government had already taken steps to confiscate the southern property of northern residents. No one could see the end from the beginning of that struggle. It is true, as a loyal citizen he was bound to stand by his government though it resulted in the sacrifice of his whole estate; but as a matter of business merely, was he bound to abandon a property worth $150,000 to look after the uncertain proceeds of his patent? It is true, he did not go to his property in Louisiana for several years after leaving Washington; but going to his property was not the way to protect it. This protection was made more secure by connecting himself in some way with the Confederate service. He swears that he was a Union man; that he was always opposed to secession; and that he did no more than he thought absolutely necessary to save his property from confiscation and destruction, and there is no proof that contradicts his own statement. The law permits applicants for patents and extensions to come before the Patent Office without regard to nationality. An Englishman or Frenchman has the same rights here that are awarded to American citizens, and that, too, without inquiring whether, during our late war, they were engaged in furnishing rebels with arms, ammunition, or other supplies. Being thus liberal with foreigners, we are estopped from being very illiberal with the would-be foreigners of the late war. I find nothing in the testimony to warrant a conclusion that the applicant has been guilty of any want of diligence in the use of his patent by reason of his joining the rebel service. Whether his diligence before and since the war have been such as to demand the favor of the Office is not so clear. He was offered unusual facilities by the Government to experiment, perfect, and introduce his cartridge into use, yet there is no evidence that it has ever been adopted by any one; and of the millions of metallic cartridges now and heretofore in public use and on sale, probably not one was made on the plan or under the patent of the applicant. On the question of novelty, the testimony and records are not favorable to the applicant. At most his cartridge, as claimed, seems to be a mere modification of what previously existed-modified, too, only in unessential particulars. The attempt to establish the fact that the applicant was the first inventor of the features which have rendered metallic cartridges so valuable and popular, I must consider a failure. His own witnesses seem to base their estimate of the value of his invention entirely upon the supposition that he was the first to embody in a cartridge the two elements of being gas-tight and central-fire. This the Office records and the testimony on file clearly show was not the case Metallic shells for cartridges, drawn from single pieces of copper, with shoulder flanges, and having recesses in the center. of the head for the reception of the fulminate, were made, as shown by the French patent of Cozelat, as early as 1826. All that was required to make Cozelat's invention identical with the cartridge now so extensively used was to insert a cap in the recess so as to form a gas-check. And even this, it appears, was done by Gavalot in 1855. In 1837 Audent made a similar cartridge, having an anvil and fulminate located within the shell, to be fired by a blow upon the rear outer end of the head. Lefaucheux took out two patents in 1847, and another in 1848, all of which were similarly constructed. The same features are also shown in the patent of Houiller, of 1846, one form of which also shows an expanding closer or cup to act as a gas-check, it being modified in other respects to adapt it to guns of different construction. Not only have these two features been long known and described in foreign patents, but they are also clearly shown in the American patent of Smith & Wesson, of August 8, 1854. When the original application in this case was under examination the applicant was referred to the patent of Chaudun, of 1843, which contains all the essential features of applicant's cartridge now under consideration. It has a shell with an auvil secured within and a loose head or end cup shoved over the rear end of the shell as a closer, with a firingpin attached to the head of this closer arranged to strike a cap secured on the stationary anvil within the shell so as to effect central-fire, the head or closer being removable so that it can be recapped and used again. The difference between this and applicant's cartridge is that in one the sliding cup is on the inside of the shell, and in the other on the outside; but, in effect, they are the substantial equivalents of each other. Between these two cartridges there certainly can be no patentable difference. Both are gas-tight, both central-fire, and both can be recharged and recapped, and both are made substantially of the same parts and in substantially the same manner. Even if there was a difference the applicant has failed to show by his own statement, or by the testimony of any witness, that such difference has any appreciable value, for in the proof of the ascertained value of his invention the witnesses have all embraced in their estimates what was invented by Chaudin, in 1843, while their estimates of value should have been confined exclusively to what was new in applicant's device, if there was any novelty in it. The extension must be refused. W. T. MUNGER vs. J. P. CONNELL. APPEAL FROM THE EXAMINERS-IN-CHIEF-INVENTION, IMPROVEMENT IN DOOR-BELLS. (Decided May 14, 1872.) Diligence in reducing an invention to practice. An inventor is not required, in order to preserve his rights, to devote all his energies to the development of his invention to the exclusion of all other matters. The law only demands of him reasonable diligence. Where an inventor, who had embodied his invention in a model which he deemed too rude in workmanship to be sent to the Patent-Office, delayed his application for the twofold purpose of completing a better model and of hearing from a pending application upon a kindred invention, and at the end of two months and a half was prostrated by disease, and during his illness another originated the same invention and obtained a patent: Held, that the first party was not fairly chargeable with lack of reasonable diligence in perfecting and adapting his invention. DUNCAN, Acting Commissioner: Munger made the invention in controversy in January, 1871, and filed an application for a patent May 11. The patent issued to his assignees June 20. Samples of the improved bell were sent out by Munger's assignees early in February, and in the latter part of that month they were engaged in the manufacture and were filling orders. Connell proves by various witnesses that, in the month of November, 1870, he had in his possession a working bell which he alleges to have been the counterpart of that upon which his application was filed June 29, 1871. This averment as to dates, and as to the substantial identity of the two models, is in a general way sustained by the witnesses; and one of them, Cushman, is so explicit in his testimony, having more than once examined all the details of the mechanism in the original bell, as to leave no room for doubt that Connell's invention was reduced to practice in November, 1865. The excuse offered for his delay in coming to the Patent Office, during which a subsequent inventor obtained a patent, is as follows: He says, in substance, that the first delay occurred because he regarded the bell first made as too rude in its workmanship to be sent to the Office as a model, and he wanted to make a modei fit for this purpose. That he fully intended to take out a patent, appears from the testimony of his attorney, who states that he brought the bell to his office in the latter part of the year 1870-probably in November-and that he then said that as soon as the patent he had then applied for was allowed he should apply for a patent on the new invention. The pending application was on a bell of different construction, and the patent on it did not issue until after the month of January next ensuing. Meanwhile, viz., about the middle of January, Connell was taken sick with a lung-fever. When he recovered > |