execution any new invention, use must be made of certain means proper for the operation. Manual labor, to a certain degree, must always be employed; the tools of artists frequently; often things manufactured, but not newly invented, such as Hartley's iron plates; all the common utensils used in conducting any process, and so up to the most complicated machinery that the art of man ever devised. Now let the merit of the invention be what it may, it is evident that the patent, in almost all these cases, cannot be granted for the means by which it acts, for in them there is nothing new, and in some of them, nothing capable of appropriation. Even where the most complicated machinery is used, if the machinery itself is not newly invented, but only conducted by the skill of the inventor, so as to produce a new effect, the patent cannot be for the machinery. In the list of patents with which I have been furnished, there are several for new methods of manufacturing articles in common use, where the sole merit and the whole effect produced, are the saving of time and expense, and thereby lowering the price of the article, and introducing it into more general use. Now I think these methods may be said to be new manufactures, in one of the common acceptations of the word, as we speak of the manufactory of glass, or any other thing of that kind. The patent cannot be for the effect produced, for it is either no substance, at all, or, what is exactly the same thing as to the question upon a patent, no new substance, but an old one produced advantageously for the public. It cannot be for the mechanism, for there is no new mechanism employed. It must then be for the method; and I would say, in the very significant words of Lord Mansfield," it must be for method detached from all physical existence whatever.' "'23 The same judge proceeds to point out a distinction, which is of great importance, and which serves as a clew to clear up some of the obscurity that hangs over the cases on this subject. He says, "When the object produced is some new substance or composition of things, it should seem that the privilege of the sole working, or making, ought to be for such new substance or composition, without regard to the mechanism or process by which it has been produced, which, though perhaps also new, will be only useful as producing the new substance. Upon this ground Dolland's patent was, perhaps, exceptionable, for that was for a method of producing a new object-glass, instead of being for the object-glass produced. If Dr. James's patent had been for his method of preparing his powders, instead of the powders themselves, that patent would have been exceptionable upon the same ground." There certainly is a plain distinction between an invention of a new composition, as a medicine, and a new process, art, or method, since in the former case, there may be nothing new in the process or mode of proceeding in compounding or manufacturing the substance, in the latter the mode of proceeding to construct the machine or instrument to which the patent relates, may be the only thing invented. Hence, in discussing this subject, judges and writers sometimes having in view one class of these causes, say, that the substance only is the subject of the patent; at other times, having in view the other class of cases, they say that a method may be patentable. Now according to the explanation of Lord Chief Justice Eyre, both these propositions are true to a certain extent, but neither is true to the extent laid down in some of the cases, that is, we cannot say that substances alone are patentable, nor that methods only are so. Accordingly Mr. Grose, in one of the Watt and Boulton cases, says it signified nothing to the inventor or the public, whether the patent be for 24 2 H. Bl. 492. the engine made or the method of making it. Indeed, to the purposes of a title to a patent or a specification, judges have considered the words method and engine to be synonymous. "Engine and method mean the same thing," says Mr. Justice Lawrence, "and may be the subject of a patent. Method, properly speaking, is only placing several things and performing several operations, in the most convenient order; but it may signify a contrivance or device, so may an engine; and therefore I think it may answer the word method."2 And Abbott C. J. says on the same subject, "When a person applies to the crown for a patent for a new engine or instrument, he may represent himself to be the inventor of a new method of accomplishing that object, which is to be accomplished by his engine or instrument." That a method or mode of operating may be the subject of a patent, is plain from this, that when the object of two patents or effect to be produced is substantially the same, they may both be valid, if the modes of attaining the desired effect are essentially different.27 Therefore where judges or writers lay down the general doctrine that a method cannot be the subject of a patent, as 25 Hornblower v. Boulton, 8 T. R. 106. 28 King v. Wheeler, 2 B. & Ald. 350. "Huddart v. Grimshaw. Dav. Pat. Cas. 290. Mr. Justice Heath does in the above case of Boulton 28 v. Bull, the proposition is true in such a restricted sense as on the whole to render it erroneous. Sec. IV.-PROCESS. The word process has been suggested instead of method, as descriptive of the subject of a patent, and what has been said of method is, in many cases, applicable to process, the difference between the two terms, as applied to this subject, being, that method is of a wider signification. Thus Abbott C. J. says, "The word manufactures, in the statute Jac. 1. c. 3, may, perhaps, extend to a new process, to be carried on by known implements, acting upon known substances, and ultimately producing some other known substance; but producing it in a cheaper or more expeditions manner, or of a better and more useful kind." 9929 It is true the Chief Justice speaks with great caution, because he was using a mere illustration, in doing which, he did not choose thus collaterally to express a positive doctrine, upon a question which 28 2 H. Bl. 483. 29 King v. Wheeler, 2 B. & Ald. 349. |