Watt's patent for "a method of lessening the consumption of steam and fuel in fire-engines," which was held, after great consideration, to be a good subject-matter. The distinction to which this case gave rise, and which greatly extended the meaning of the term "manufacture," is this: that although a principle, or a rule in mechanics, or an elementary truth in physics, cannot be the illustrate this. The effect produced by Mr. David Hartley's invention for securing buildings from fire is no substance, or composition of things; it is a mere negative quality, the absence of fire. This effect is produced by a new method of disposing iron plates in buildings. In the nature of things, the patent could not be for the effect produced. I think it could not be for making the plates of iron, which, when disposed in a particular manner, produced the effect; for those are things in common use. But the invention consists in the method of disposing those plates of iron so as to produce their effect; and that effect being a useful and meritorious one, the patent seems to have been very properly granted to him for his method of securing buildings from fire. And this compendious analysis of new manufactures, mentioned in the statute, satisfies my doubt, whether anything could be the subject of a patent but something organized and capable of precise specification. But for the more satisfactory solution of the other points which are made in this case, I shall pursue this subject a little further. In Mr. Hartley's method, plates of iron are the means which he employs; but he did not invent those means; the invention wholly consisted in the new manner of using, or I would rather say of disposing, a thing in common use, and which every man might make at his pleasure, and which, therefore, I repeat, could not, in my judgment, be the subject of the patent. In the nature of things it must be that, in the carrying into 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 approbation. 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 Hartley's case it could not be for the effect produced; for the effect, as I have already observed, is merely negative, though it was meritorious: 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 of any other thing of that kind. Per Eyre, C. J., in Boulton v. Bull, 2 H. Bl. 492. 1 Boulton v. Bull, ut supra; Hornblower v. Boulton, ut supra. subject of a patent, yet a new principle, rule, or truth, developed, carried out, and embodied in the mode of using it, may be the subject of a patent. A mere principle is an abstract discovery, incapable of answering the term "manufacture"; but a principle so far embodied and connected with corporeal substances, as to be in a condition to act and to produce effects in any art, trade, mystery, or manual occupation, becomes the practical manner of doing a particular thing. It is no longer a principle, but a process.1 Mr. Watt's invention was the discovery of a practical means of lessening the consumption of steam, by protecting the cylinder from the external air, and keeping it at a temperature not below that of steam itself. He thus brought a principle into practical application, by the invention of a process carried on by a newly contrived machine. § 6. In like manner, a patent for the application of the flame of gas, instead of the flame of oil, to remove the superfluous fibres of lace, was sustained.2 So, too, where the invention consisted in the use and application of lime and mine-rubbish in the smelting of iron, Lord Eldon said there might be a patent for a new combination of materials previously in use for the same purpose, or for a new method of applying such materials. But this distinction has been made still more prominent by two more recent cases. In one the patent was for the application of anthracite, combined with hot-air blast, in the smelting or manufacture of iron from iron-stone, mine, or ore; and the patent was sustained. In the other, the invention was of a mode of welding iron tubes, without the use of a maundril, or any internal support; and this patent was also 'sustained.5 § 7. These cases show that the term "manufacture" has been extended to include every object upon which art or skill can be exercised, so as to afford products fabricated by the hand of man, or 1 See the remarks of Eyre, C. J., ante. 1 Hall v. Jervis, Webs. Pat. Cas. 100. * Hill v. Thompson, 3 Mer. 626; Webs. Pat. Cas. 237. In Morgan v. Seaward, 2 Mees. & W. 544, Mr. Baron Parke said: "The word 'manufacture,' in the statute, must be construed one of two ways; it may mean the machine when completed, or the mode of constructing the machine." Crane v. Price, Webs. Pat. Cas. 393, 408. ' Russell v. Cowley, Webs. Pat. Cas. 459. by the labor which he directs. In this sense it includes a process; so that a patent may, it is said, be taken for a process, method, or practical application of a principle, that will cover every means or apparatus by which that process or method can be carried on, or by which that principle can be applied, provided the patentee has not only discovered the principle, but has also invented some mode of carrying it into effect.2 Such has been the construction given to this important clause in the Statute of Monopolies, upon which the English patent system has been built. The recent English statutes, which have employed only the word "inventions," when referring to the subjects of this class of patent privileges, manifestly assume that the settled law has sufficiently defined them.3 § 8. In this country, when the Constitution of the United States was framed, and the clause was inserted giving power to Congress "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing, for limited times, to authors and inventors, the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries," the terms "inventors" and "discoveries" had a well-understood meaning, founded not only upon the practice and law of England, but upon a similar practice of some of the States before the adoption of the Constitution, which, by special grants in particular cases, often protected new and useful inventions. Accordingly, in the first general patent law passed by Congress, and entitled "An act to promote the progress of useful arts," the subjects of the patent privileges to be granted were described as the invention or discovery of "any useful art, manufacture, engine, machine, or device, or any improvement therein not before known or used."4 In the next statute, the phraseology was first introduced, which has been employed ever since, and is continued in the present patent law (that of 1836), namely, " any new and useful art, machine, manufacture or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement on any art, machine, manufacture or composition of matter, not known or used before the application" for a patent.5 Webster's Law and Practice, Supplement, p. 8. Forsyth v. Riviere, Webs. Pat. Cas. 97, note. Per Alderson, B., in Jupe v. Pratt, Ibid. 146, and in Nielson v. Hartford, Ibid. 342. * 15 & 16 Vict. cap. 83 (July 1, 1852). Act of April 10, 1790. Act of February 21, 1793. § 9. I. AN ART. What is meant by the statute when it describes the subject of a patent as "any new and useful art," or "any new and useful improvement on any art," it is not difficult to understand, if we bear in mind the general purpose of the patent laws, and the other classes of subjects which they embrace. We have just seen that, in order to make a new process or method of working or of producing an effect or result in matter a subject of a patent in England, a somewhat liberal construction of the term "manufacture" became necessary, by which an improvement in the art or process of making or doing a thing was made constructively to be represented by the term which ordinarily would mean only the thing itself, when made or done. It was doubtless to avoid the necessity for this kind of construction that the framers of our legislation selected a term which, proprio vigore, would embrace those inventions where the particular machinery or apparatus, or the particular substances employed, would not constitute the discovery, so much as a newly invented mode or process of applying them, in respect to the order, or position, or relations, in which they are used. Thus, for example, in the art of dyeing, or tanning, it is obvious that an old article of manufacture may be produced by the use of old materials, but produced by the application of those materials in new relations. In such cases it might not be practicable to claim the article itself, when made, as a new manufacture, for it might, as an article of commerce or consumption, differ in no appreciable way from the same kind of article produced by the old and well-known method. At the same time the new method of producing the article might be a great improvement, introducing greater cheapness, rapidity, or simplicity in the process itself. Again, other cases may be supposed, where the manufacture itself, as produced by a new process, would be better than the same manufacture produced by the old process, as in the different modes of making iron from the native ore; and yet the really new discovery, in such cases, could not well be described as a new 66 manufacture or a new composition of matter," without a figurative use of those terms which it is desirable to avoid. This difficulty is avoided by the use of the term "art," which was intended to embrace those inventions where the particular apparatus or materials employed may not be the essence of the discovery, but where that essence consists in using apparatus or materials in new processes, methods, or rela tions, so as to constitute a new mode of attaining an old result; or a mode of attaining a new result, in a particular department of industry, which result may not of itself be any new machine, manufacture, or composition of matter; or finally, an entirely new process of making or doing something which has not been made or done before, by any process. § 10. A case which occurred before Mr. Justice Washington furnishes an illustration of an "art," as the subject of a patent. The plaintiff alleged himself to be the inventor of a new and useful improvement in the printing of bank-notes, which was said to furnish an additional security against counterfeiting. The invention, as summed up in his specification, was "to print copperplate on both sides of the note or bill; or copperplate on one side and letter-press on the other; or letter-press on both sides of a banknote or bill, as an additional security against counterfeiting." The art of printing with both letter-press and copperplate was not the invention of the plaintiff. He made use of old materials and processes in a new manner, for the purpose of producing a new effect, namely, a new security against counterfeiting. His patent, therefore, was for the new application of the process of printing by copperplate and letter-press, by printing on both sides of the note; and this new application was held by the court to be an art, within the terms of the statute.1 § 11. Another illustration is presented by a patent for a mode of casting iron rollers or cylinders, so that, when the metal was introduced into the mould, it should receive a rotary motion, by which the dross would be thrown into the centre instead of upon the surface of the cylinder. This was effected solely by changing the direction of the tube which conveyed the metal to the mould from a horizontal or perpendicular position to a direction approaching a tangent of the cylinder.2 § 12.. Another very instructive illustration is presented in a severely litigated case in England, where an old machine was made use of in a new process. This case exhibits in a striking 1 Kneass v. The Schuylkill Bank, 4 Washington's R. 9, 12. McClurg v. Kingsland, 1 Howard, 204. See also Gray v. James, Peters's Circ. C. R. 394. |