Argument for Appellant.

kind of contract which arises from the offer of a reward, and the act defines the two terms which are essential, to wit: what the inventor is to do in order to become entitled to the reward, and what the exact measure of the reward is.

The Revised Statutes, $$ 4886, 4888, enact that whoever makes a new invention, and brings an intelligible description of it to the public at its patent office, claiming the reward, shall obtain a patent. Section 4884 defines what this reward is. It is "a grant to the patentee, his heirs or assigns, for the term of seventeen years, of the exclusive right to make, use, and vend the invention or discovery."

The bare assertion of the inventor that he has earned the reward, of course cannot be unreservedly accepted. So section 4893 provides that "on the filing" of the description and claim, the promising party, that is, the public, will make an examination through its special agent; "and if, on such examination, it shall appear that the claimant is justly entitled to a patent under the law, and that the same is sufficiently useful and important, the commissioner shall issue a patent therefor."

In contracts of this character (those initiated by the offer of a reward) the acceptance of the offer is made by the performance by the offeree of the consideration. It is this performance which converts the offer into a binding contract. Langdell's Law of Contracts, § 4. And, under the patent law, this performance is fully effected by the filing of the application, accompanied with the required fee. This is a delivery to the party offering the reward of the thing desired. Nothing remains but the duty of payment.

The right of the one party and the obligation of the other are fixed and completed. The privilege reserved to the promisor of an examination for the purpose of identification neither weakens the right nor the obligation. Indeed, as it postpones the day of payment, it imposes an additional obligation to make it as soon as practicable, and to make it in such a way that the making of it shall not diminish the value of the reward to the receiver, nor lighten its burden to the payer. See Grant v. Raymond, 6 Pet. 218.

Argument for Appellant.

(2) Not only does our patent law, by the very nature of its fundamental provisions, initiate a contract, but it contains special provisions which affirm the existence of contract relations. It affords the remedy of specific performance.

This was done to a certain extent by the act of 1836, and the privilege was by the act of March 3, 1859, § 10, conferred in terms substantially the same with those now embodied in § 4915 of the Revised Statutes. These steps, taken long before the act establishing the Court of Claims, were the first recognition of the justice of compelling the government to perform its own obligations where they possessed all the substantial elements of a contract.

(3) In all cases of rights resting in contract, there must be a time when such rights must be viewed as ripening into completion. This time, in the case of the obligation to issue a patent, is left in no manner of doubt. The plain sense of justice tells us that a man to whom an offer of a reward is made for giving, or doing, a particular thing, is entitled to the reward the moment he has done it; and this, in the case of an inventor, is when he describes and discloses his secret to the government. Nothing remains but to pay him. Some time, indeed, may be requisite and some labor, perhaps much time and much labor, to identify the thing and make sure that it conforms to the terms of the offer; but, as already observed, this neither weakens nor postpones the obligation, but rather adds to it another, that it be done as speedily as possible.

VI. The whole argument in support of the interpretation of the defendants finally reduces itself to this, that at the first reading "first patented" and "previously patented" more naturally and logically relate to the time of the issue of the foreign patent. Let it be so. It is safe to say that this argument has never been allowed to prevail, particularly in the case of revising statutes, where either reason, or justice, or the policy of the law, or the history of prior legislation on the same subject, has justified a well-grounded doubt whether such prima facie interpretation was correct. To press such an interpretation when all these considerations concur in rejecting it is to set reason at defiance.

Argument for Appellant.

(1) Such a rule of construction would wipe out of existence nearly the whole of the law of interpretation. We should indeed have much less law to study, but both the laws which men pass and the agreements they make would become, in large measure, unintelligible absurdities. The principal mass of our rules of interpretation is framed upon a recognition of the fact that prima facie, first-blush interpretation would throw both the public and the private affairs of men into inextricable confusion.

(2) Such a rule has never been acted upon. Text writers and judges alike always enjoin in any doubtful case a resort to reason, to justice, to policy, to the antecedent, and surrounding circumstances. Human language, though the best, is by no means a perfect exponent of thought, even when used by the clearest and most skilful minds; as employed by ordinary men, it is full of imperfections. Mankind can never be taught to use language with perfect accuracy by simply subjecting them to inconveniences. That failures in clearness of expression will forever take place must be accepted as a fact, and it is one of the highest functions of the judicial office to ascertain the true meaning of the language actually employed by bringing to bear on it those other lights and guides which are to be found outside of the language. United States v. Kirby, 7 Wall. 482; United States v. Babbit, 1 Black, 55; Wilson v. Rousseau, 4 How. 646; Bloomer v. McQuewan, 14 How. 539; Paper Bag Cases, 105 U. S. 766; Siemens v. Sellers, 123 U. S. 276; Nash v. Towne, 5 Wall. 689; Mobile & Montgomery Railway v. Jurey, 111 U. S. 584; Canal Co. v. Hill, 15 Wall. 94.

(3) An acceptance by this court of the defendants' rule of interpretation would be a reversal of the method it has uniformly adopted in the construction and administration of the patent law from the time when it was first called upon to construe it to the present hour. The court has from the first proceeded upon the view that the main object of Congress was to promote the progress of the useful arts by promising a sure and certain reward to inventors, and in keeping that promise. The language which Congress has employed to carry out this

Opinion of the Court.

design has often been obscure, contradictory or otherwise illadapted. The court, without violating settled principles of interpretation, has construed the language employed very freely to the end that the object should be secured. Its successive interpretations have been followed and adopted by Congress by the introduction of amendments, and the system is thus in a large degree the creation of the court.

(4) But the most pointed support, both of the rule of interpretation insisted upon in this brief, and of its application to the precise case under discussion, is to be found in some recent English adjudications. In re Johnson's Patent, 13 Ch. D. 398; Holste v. Robertson, 4 Ch. D. 9.

VII. The appellees seek to show there is a large assent to their view among the officers of the Patent Office and Judges of the Circuit Courts. If this really existed it would go not very far to support their contention; but it does not. Instead of general concurrence, doubt and dissent are everywhere exhibited.

MR. JUSTICE HARLAN delivered the opinion of the court.

This case is before us upon a certificate made under the sixth section of the act of March 3, 1891, 26 Stat. 826, c. 517, providing that a Circuit Court of Appeals may in any case of which it has appellate jurisdiction certify questions or propositions of law for the proper decision of which it desires the instruction of this court.

On the first day of December, 1876, John J. Bate made application to the United States for letters patent for an improvement in processes for preserving meats during storage and transportation.

Pending this application two foreign patents were granted for the Bate invention; one, for the term of fourteen years, by the British government to William Robert Blake, on a communication from Bate under date of January 29, 1877,. which patent was sealed July 13, 1877, and the complete specifications of which were filed July 26, 1877; the other, for

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Opinion of the Court.

the term of five years, by the government of the Dominion of Canada to Bate himself under date of January 9, 1877.

After these foreign patents were issued, namely, on the 20th day of November, 1877, Bate received, a patent from the United States, expressed to be for the term of seventeen years, and assigned it to the Bate Refrigerating Company, the plaintiff in this suit.

The present suit was brought by that company, July 25, 1892, for an injunction against the infringement of the American patent, as well as for an accounting. It was heard in the Circuit Court on pleas to the bill, and a decree was passed dismissing the suit. From that decree an appeal was taken to the Circuit Court of Appeals.

Both foreign patents for the Bate invention having expired before the expiration of the seventeen years specified in the United States patent, the following questions arose in and have been certified by the Circuit Court of Appeals: Whether the invention for which the patent from the United States was issued had been "previously patented in a foreign country," within the meaning of those words in section 4887 of the Revised Statutes; and whether the American patent expired under the terms of that section before the expiration of seventeen years from its date.

The Revised Statutes of the United States provide that any person inventing or discovering any new and useful art, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, "not known or used by others in this country, and not patented or described in any printed publication in this or any foreign country, before his invention or discovery thereof, and not in public use or on sale for more than two years prior to his application, unless the same is proved to have been abandoned," may obtain a patent therefor, which shall contain a grant of the exclusive right for the term of seventeen years to make, use, and vend such invention or discovery throughout the United States and the Territories thereof, and bear date as of a day not later than six months from the time at which it was passed and allowed and notice thereof sent to the applicant or his agent. S$ 4884, 4885, 4886.