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question. "Nor," the court further said, "is this a case for the application of the doctrine that, in cases of ambiguity, the practice adopted by an executive department of the government in interpreting and administering a statute is to be taken as some evidence of its proper construction. The question before us as to the validity of a patent, by reason of preexisting acts or omissions of the inventor, of the character of those involved in the present case, is not a question of executive administration, but is properly a judicial question. Although it may be a question which, to some extent, may come under the cognizance of the Commissioner of Patents, in granting a patent, yet, like all the questions passed upon by him in granting a patent which are similar in character to the question here involved, his determination thereof, in granting a particular patent, has never been looked upon as concluding the determination of the courts in regard to those questions respecting such particular patent, and, a fortiori, respecting other patents." The appellant, therefore, properly insists that the determination of the present question shall not be deemed absolutely concluded either by the practice that has obtained in the Patent Office since the passage of the act of 1870 nor by decisions in the inferior courts of the United States.

If section 4887 of the Revised Statutes is so worded as to express clearly the intention of Congress, the court must give effect to that intention. But even if the statute be not so explicit as to preclude construction; if upon applying to it the established rules of interpretation; if looking at it in the light of previous legislation on the subject; if there be reasonable ground for adopting either one of two constructions; this court, without departing from sound principle, may well adopt that construction which is in harmony with the settled practice of the executive branch of the government, and with the course of judicial decisions in the Circuit Courts of the United States; especially, if there be reason to suppose that vast interests may have grown up under that practice and under judicial decisions, which may be disturbed or destroyed by the announcement of a different rule.

Opinion of the Court.

Looking at the words of the statutes referred to, neither unduly enlarging nor unduly restricting their meaning, we are of opinion that Congress intended by the twenty-fifth section of the act of 1870, preserved in section 4887 of the Revised Statutes, to introduce a new test in respect of the term of an American patent where the same invention was the subject of a foreign patent previously issued. It has already been observed that the statutes relating to patents show upon their face that Congress always had in mind the difference between an application for a patent and the patent itself. And that difference is apparent in the act of 1870. We find there the words "application," "patent," "patented," "first patented," and "caused to be patented."

The inventor whom the act of 1839 was designed to protect was one whose invention had not been introduced into public and common use in the United States prior to his application for an American patent, and which had been "patented in a foreign country more than six months prior to his application." In reference to an American patent, granted under those circumstances, that act expressly declared that it should be limited to fourteen years-not, let it be observed, from the date of the American patent, but from the date or publication of the foreign letters patent.

The act of 1870 provided for the case of an inventor whose invention had not been introduced into public use in the United States for more than two years prior to his application, but which had been "first patented or caused to be patented in a foreign country." In such a case, that statute expressly provided that the American patent should. expire with the foreign patent having the shortest term

to run.

The case provided for by section 4887 of the Revised Statutes is the same as that provided for by the twenty-fifth section of the act of 1870, and the words "first patented or caused to be patented in a foreign country" in the first clause of that section are emphasized by the words in the succeeding clause, "previously patented" in a foreign country.

We cannot superadd, in section 4887 of the Revised Stat

Opinion of the Court.

utes, the words "prior to the application" either after the words "first patented or caused to be patented in a foreign country," or after the words "previously patented in a foreign country," without defeating the intention of Congress as manifested by the language it selected to indicate its purpose. And the express command of the existing statute is that every American patent for an invention "previously patented in a foreign country," that is, "first patented or caused to be patented in a foreign country," shall expire at the same time with the foreign patent. No words are used that will justify the court in holding that an invention patented in a foreign country before being patented here, is to be exempt from the operation of the provision limiting the term of the American patent to expire with the foreign patent.

Was the Bate invention patented abroad before it was patented in this country? If so, the American patent expired with the foreign patent, and thereby the American public became entitled to use the invention from the time the foreign public were permitted to use it. Congress, in effect, by the existing law, says to an inventor seeking to enjoy the exclusive use in this country of his invention for the full term prescribed by law: "If your invention has not been introduced into public use in the United States for more than two years, you may, upon complying with the conditions prescribed, obtain an American patent, and you may, if you can, obtain a foreign patent. But the American patent will be granted on the condition that if you obtain the foreign patent first, your invention shall be free to the American people whenever by reason of the expiration of the foreign patent it becomes free to people abroad; but in no case shall the term of the American patent exceed seventeen years." This we deem to be a sound interpretation of the statute, giving to the words used the meaning required by their ordinary signifi

cation.

In our judgment the language used is so plain and unambiguous that a refusal to recognize its natural, obvious meaning would be justly regarded as indicating a purpose to change

Opinion of the Court.

the law by judicial action based upon some supposed policy of Congress. But, as declared in Hadden v. Collector, 5 Wall. 107, 111, "what is termed the policy of the government with reference to any particular legislation is generally a very uncertain thing, upon which all sorts of opinions, each variant from the other, may be formed by different persons. It is a ground much too unstable upon which to rest the judgment of the court in the interpretation of statutes." "Where the language of the act is explicit," this court has said, "there is great danger in departing from the words used, to give an effect to the law which may be supposed to have been designed by the legislature. It is not for the court to say, where the language of the statute is clear, that it shall be so construed as to embrace cases, because no good reason can be assigned why they were excluded from its provisions." Scott v. Reid, 10 Pet. 524, 527.

Undoubtedly the court, when endeavoring to ascertain the intention of the legislature, may be justified, in some circumstances, in giving weight to considerations of injustice or inconvenience that may arise from a particular construction of a statute. Wilson v. Rousseau, 4 How. 646, 680; Bloomer v. McQuewan, 14 How. 539, 553; Blake v. Nat. Banks, 23 Wall. 307, 320; United States v. Kirby, 7 Wall. 482, 486. It is, therefore, said that the time ordinarily intervening in other countries between the filing of an application and the granting of a patent is very short in comparison with the time. ordinarily consumed in this country in obtaining a patent after the inventor has filed his application in the Patent Office, and, consequently, the statute-if construed as we have indicated its words reasonably require might operate to the injury of an American inventor in that he will be deprived of so much of the statutory term of his American patent as will be in excess of the term of any foreign patent previously obtained for the same invention. If the statute thus construed does not give to the inventor all the benefits he would like to have, the remedy is with another department of the government, and it is not for the courts to tamper with the words of a statute or, by a strained construction of

Opinion of the Court.

legislative enactments, the language of which is clear and explicit, to accomplish results not contemplated by Congress. This court, speaking by Chief Justice Marshall, in United States v. Fisher, 2 Cranch, 358, 385, said that where the meaning of the legislature was plain "it must be obeyed."

Besides, the principle that limits an American patent to expire with a previous foreign patent covering the same invention was not first introduced by the act of 1870. It appears in the act of 1839; for it is there expressly declared that the American patent which the inventor shall not be debarred from receiving by reason of the invention having been patented in a foreign country more than six months prior to his application in this country, "shall be limited to fourteen years from the date of publication of such foreign letters-patent." While that act was in force the term prescribed for an American patent was fourteen years. And yet, according to its provisions, that time if the inventor had a foreign patent antedating his American application by more than six months -was to be computed, not from the date of the American patent, but from the date or publication of the foreign patent. That principle is preserved in the existing law; for, under the Revised Statutes, as under the act of 1870, if there be an American patent for an invention previously patented abroad, the former expires, not, it is true, at the expiration of any given number of years, as under the act of 1839, but at the time the foreign patent expires.

It is also said that the United States promised the inventor, when making his application, to give him a patent for the full term of seventeen years from the date of his patent, if, upon examination, it was found that he was entitled to one at the time of such application; and, consequently, that a curtailment of that term by reason of something occurring after the filing of the application, and for which he may not be responsible, is inconsistent with good faith upon the part of the government. Of course, this court would hesitate to accept any construction of an act of Congress that would imply bad faith upon the part of the government. But the contention just referred to assumes the very matter in dispute. It assumes