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statute of 21 James I., and also one of the descriptions in the act of Congress of 1793, namely, manufacture. The subject was much discussed in the cases arising on Watt's patent for an improvement in the steam engine. In one of these cases, Lord Chief Justice Eyre thus explains this term. He says that the exposition of the Statute of 21 James I. c. 3, as far as usage will expound it, has gone very much beyond the letter. In 2 Salkeld, 447, the words "new devices" are substituted and used as synonymous with the words "new manufacture." It was admitted in the argument at the bar, that the word "manufacture," in the statute, was of extensive signification, that it applied not only to things made, but to the practice of making, to principles carried into practice in a new manner, to new results of principles carried into practice. Let us pursue this admission. Under things made, we may class, in the first place, new compositions of things, such as manufactures in the most ordinary sense of the word; secondly, all mechanical inventions, whether made to produce old or new effects; for a new piece of mechanism is certainly a thing made. Under the practice of making, we may class all new artificial manners of operating with the hand, or with instruments in common use, new processes in any art, producing effects useful to the public.2

* Boulton v. Bull, 2. H. Bl. 481.

In the same case, Mr. Justice Heath gives the following exposition of this term : "What are new manufactures within the scope of the proviso of the statute 21 Jac. 1? Such as are reducible to two classes. The first class includes machinery, the second, substances (such as medicines) formed by chemical and other processes, where the vendible substance is the thing produced, and that which operates preserves no permanent form. In the first class, the machine, and in the second, the substance produced, is the subject of the patent. I approve of the term manufacture in the statute, because it precludes all nice refinements; it gives us to understand the reason of the proviso, that it was introduced for the benefit of trade."

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Lord Kenyon, in one of the same class of cases, defines the word according to its etymology; considering it to be something made by the hands of man.^

In a subsequent case we find the same term thus explained by Lord Chief Justice Abbott: "The word manufacture,' in the statute 21 Jac. 1. c. 3, has been generally understood to denote either a thing made, which is useful for its own sake, and vendible as such, as a medicine, a stove, a telescope, and many others, or to mean an engine, or instru

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ment, or some part of an engine or instrument, to be employed either in the making of some previously known article, or in some other useful purpose, as a stocking-frame, or a steam engine for raising water from mines. Or it may perhaps extend also to a new process to be carried on by known implements, or elements, acting upon known substances, and ultimately producing some other known substance, but producing it in a cheaper, or more expeditious manner, or of a better and more useful kind."'5

"In

Lord Ellenborough gives the following description of what is a manufacture within the statute. every invention through the medium of mechanism, there are some materials which are common, and cannot be supposed to be appropriated in the terms of any patent. There are common elementary materials to work with in machinery; but it is the adaptation of those materials to the execution of any particular purpose, that constitutes the invention; and if the application of them be new; if the combination in its nature be essentially new; if it be productive of a new end, and beneficial to the public, it is that species of invention, which, protected by the King's patent, ought to continue to the person the sole right of vending it."'

'The King v. Wheeler, 2 B. & Ald. 349.
"Huddart v. Grimshaw, Dav. Pat. Cas. 278.

"The true foundation of all patents," says Mr. Justice Buller, "must be the manufacture itself; and so says the statute 21 Jac. 1 c. 3. And whether the manufacture be with or without principle, produced by accident or by art, is immaterial. Unless this patent can be supported for the manufacture, it cannot be supported at all." So Mr. Justice Story says, "It is of no consequence whether the thing be simple, or complicated; whether it be by accident, or by long, laborious thought, or by an instantaneous flash of mind, that it is first done. The law looks to the fact, and not to the process, by which it is accomplished. It gives the first inventor or discoverer of the thing, the exclusive right, and asks nothing as to the mode or extent of the application of his genius to conceive or execute it."'8

The expression in the French law on this subject, is not, as we have seen, precisely equivalent to that of the English statute, or rather, the terms are not those of which the word manufacture would be a literal translation, and yet the construction put upon their law is very similar. Accordingly, M. Renouard's description of patentable subjects will answer very well as an exposition of the English act of 21 James I. or the act of Congress of 1793, on this subject. He says, "It is not every kind of inven

'Boulton v. Bull, 2 H. Bl. 486. * Earle v. Sawyer, 4 Mason, 6.

tion and discovery that is the subject of a patent right. It is necessary that the invention or discovery should be of a nature to afford products that may be fabricated by, the hands of man, or by the labor which he directs, or which may be subjects of commerce by sale and purchase. If, for instance, a philosopher discovers and makes known a property of heat, before unknown, and yet draws from his discovery no special and positive application to specific fabrications, his discovery is merely scientific, and not patentable. But if, on the contrary, he avails himself of the scientific principles, for the production or combination of a new substance, for the formation of an instrument or machine, if he employs it to obtain a result that is new and of a vendible description, whatever it may be, he may take out a valid patent.

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Sec. III.-METHOD.

Having given a definition of the word manufacture by the use of the other expressions, already enumerated, the judges and the writers proceed to analyze those other expressions, and make the necessary distinctions, qualifications, and exceptions. The words method and process are often used in these definitions of manufactures, and also in giving titles to patents,

'Renouard, c. 5. s. 1. p. 165, 166.

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