Argument for Appellant. ous folly, unjust to inventors, prejudicial to the public, and utterly inconsistent with a long-settled policy of the government. This position cannot be maintained. Undoubtedly language may be employed which is so precise and clear as to admit of but one meaning. In such a case, as there can be no doubt, none of those inquiries which are designed to remove doubt are legitimate. It matters not in such a case what the consequences may be. The legislature must be taken to have meant what it has indubitably said. But there are very few such cases as these; and the above-mentioned rule, therefore, carries us but a short way, and has but a prima facie preference. Statutory Interpretation, (edited by Endlich,) §§ 25-27. At what point are we to determine whether the language of a clause of a statute admits of but one interpretation? Single sentences often seem quite clear of themselves, but become open to doubt when read in connection with something which precedes or follows. An unlearned person may interpret a clause in a statute, and think that but one interpretation is possible; but a lawyer, skilled in the subject to which it relates, might be immediately perplexed with doubt. In order to know whether the statute is open to doubt, it must be intelligently applied to the subject-matter to which it relates. That subject is the patent system of the United States and the laws regulating it. When it is so applied, its language will be the better understood, and it can be the better determined whether it admits of more than one interpretation. Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 143 U. S. 457, 458; United States v. Lacher, 134 U. S. 624; Atkins v. Disintegrating Co., 18 Wall. 272. Applying the section to that subject-matter, a doubt immediately arises as to the soundness of the first-blush interpretation. Take the first clause of section 4887. "No person shall be debarred from receiving a patent for his invention or discovery, nor shall any patent be declared invalid by reason of its having been first patented or caused to be patented in a foreign country." The defendants insist that the words "first patented" mean patented in a foreign country at some time before the issuing a patent in the United States. But why Argument for Appellant. should Congress enact that a prior foreign patent should not be a bar to an American patent when it never was, and was never by any one supposed to be, a bar? It was only in case the foreign patent had been taken out prior to the application for the American patent, that it could have, under the law as it had always stood, any effect to debar, or otherwise injure, the American discoverer. The mind cannot do otherwise than doubt whether Congress did not by the words "first patented" mean patented before application; because the clause then becomes intelligible and reasonable. Any unjust result or consequence which would flow from a particular interpretation of a statute has always been regarded as a reason which, of itself, should induce a close examination of everything having a bearing upon the meaning of the legislature; that is to say, it justifies and requires the work of interpretation. Wilson v. Rousseau, 4 How. 646. Section 4887 is, on all hands, admitted to be a mere revision and reënactment of sec. 25 of the act of 1870, and means precisely what that section means. Edison Co. v. United States Co., 35 Fed. Rep. 134; Siemens v. Sellers, 123 U. S. 276. The proper question, therefore, is, what is the meaning of sec. 25 of the act of 1870? But the act of 1870 is itself a revision of the then existing law, and this 25th section, if the interpretation of the defendants is correct, changes, in a very material respect, the law which it affects only to revise; for there is no doubt that, by the law as it stood at the time of the revision of 1870, and had stood for a generation, the taking out of a foreign patent had no effect upon the right of the domestic inventor, except when it was taken out prior to his application. It is a rule, without exception, that all revisions, when it is suggested that they change the preexisting law, are open to examination, in order that it may be more clearly seen whether the preëxisting law is really changed; and, upon such examination, there is a fixed presumption that the prior law is not changed, unless there be evidence that such was the legislative intent. The reason of this rule is apparent. Revisions are usually Argument for Appellant. the work of one mind, or a few minds, selected for the purpose of improving the form, without changing the substance of laws; minds, too, which are always endeavoring to express, and thinking they can better express, what another mind has attempted to express. When they are brought before the legislative body for enactment they are accompanied with the declaration, express or implied: "No change has been made by this revising bill in the substance of the existing law as it is settled by statute or judicial decision." The revisers themselves intend no change. The legislative body intends none. But the work of revising laws, of consolidating various statutes, pruning away redundancies, reconciling apparent contradictions, removing ambiguities, etc., is a task for the highest abilities, and is seldom well performed. Changes of language are inevitable, and yet are pregnant with the greatest danger of changing the meaning. But for the rule above mentioned, every considerable revision would, in the language of Mr. Justice Baldwin, McClurg v. Kingsland, 1 How. 202, 211, by "changing the law according to every change of mere phraseology, make it a labyrinth of inextricable confusion." A multitude of authorities have sanctioned this doctrine. Yates's case, 4 Johns. 316; Goodell v. Jackson, 20 Johns. 693; In re Brown, 21 Wend. 316, 319; Douglass v. Howland, 24 Wend. 35; Theriat v. Hart, 2 Hill, 380; Crosswell v. Crane, 7 Barb. 191; Elwood v. Kloch, 13 Barb. 50; Dominick v. Michael, 4 Sandf. 374; Taggard v. Roosevelt, 8 How. Pr. 141; Jenkins v. Fahey, 73 N. Y. 355; The L. W. Eaton, 9 Ben. 289; The Brothers, 10 Ben. 400. Section 25 of the statute of 1870 declared that "the patent shall expire" with the foreign patent. Rev. Stat. § 4887 enacted that "the patent shall be so limited as to expire," etc. It was contended that under the Revised Statutes the patent would be void unless it was so limited by its terms. The words added in the Revised Statutes were apt to convey this meaning, and, if they did not effect this, their insertion was totally without effect. Undoubtedly the fact was that the commissioners intended this change, though their report did Argument for Appellant. not call attention to it, and that Congress voted without noticing the change, or actually intending to make any. There upon the courts held that a change of plan or policy was not to be deduced from a revision, unless the language was not only apt, but so "plain and unequivocal" as to "demonstrate that intention beyond a doubt." In other words, the use in a revision of language plain enough, if taken by itself, to effect a change in the law, will not be allowed to have the effect, unless the court is satisfied that Congress in fact realized that effect, contemplated it and actively intended it. This decision was made in Canaan v. Pound Mfg. Co., 23 Blatchford, 173. In Bate v. Hammond, 129 U. S. 151, 169, the Supreme Court, deciding the same question the same way, referred with approval to this decision. The Supreme Court, in United States v. Bowen, 100 U. S. 508, approved this rule, and their application of it is instructive. See also Blake v. National Banks, 23 Wall. 307; Meyer v. Car Co., 102 U. S. 1; Butterworth v. Hoe, 112 U. S. 50. II. The statute (Rev. Stat. § 4887) is therefore open to interpretation; and the inquiry is what Congress intended by the words "first patented or caused to be patented in a foreign country," and by the words "previously patented in a foreign country." Do they mean patented in a foreign country before the issue of the patent here, or before the application for it? A review of the course of legislation upon the subject, in the light of justice and reason, and the clear policy of the law, will leave no reasonable doubt that the latter meaning was the one intended. It will be agreed that the true method of inquiry is to ascer tain what the law was upon the point in question prior to the employment of the particular language under interpretation, to the end that we may see whether there were any, and what, mischiefs or difficulties in the preëxisting law which the language was calculated to correct. A review of legislation down to 1836 makes the following points clear: (1) That the statutes of 1790 and 1793, by making it, among other things, essential to a patent that the invention should not Argument for Appellant. have been "known" by others than the inventor before the application, rendered a foreign patent issued to the same inventor, prior to his application, a bar to a patent here. This was a result not agreeable to justice or sound policy; but at that time the evil was not of sufficient consequence to attract notice and call for a remedy. (2) Prior to 1836 it had become otherwise. There was a growing advantage to inventors to be derived from foreign patents, and there was no reason why the taking of one should be made to involve a forfeiture of the inventor's privilege here, or any other punishment. The practice of taking them, so guarded as not to be the source of incidental mischief, was, on the contrary, one which our law should encourage. (3) It was the intention of Congress in 1836 to do away with this objectionable feature in our patent law, as it then stood, and to encourage the taking out of patents in foreign countries. To this end, while by § 6 of the act of that year careful provision was made to insure that the applicant for a patent should be the first inventor, clauses were inserted in § 7 apparently designed to prevent mere knowledge of the invention prior to the application, as distinguished from use, from being a bar. Patenting, or description in a printed publication, if after the discovery by the applicant, was no longer to be a bar, unless the invention had been "in public use or on sale, with the inventor's consent or allowance, prior to the application." Mere disclosure before application was apparently to be no longer fatal. It would seem, however, that some one who had a hand in shaping the statute was, apparently, not sure that this result was secured by §7; and, perhaps, it was not secured; for the choice of a foreign patent in preference to an American one may furnish, in some cases, material support to the vague and uncertain doctrine of abandonment. To remove all doubt upon this point, and it being at the same time thought important that one who had taken out a patent abroad should not long delay in making his application in this country, a clause was framed and introduced into § 8, designed to have the double effect of making it clear, that a foreign patent should not bar a patent here, and that the |