1. PATENT MAY ISSUE TO ASSIGNEES.-Patents may be granted and issued or reissued to the assignee of the inventor or discoverer, the assignment thereof being first entered of record in the Patent Office; but in such case the application for the patent shall be made and the specification sworn to by the inventor or discoverer; and also, if he be living, in case of an application for reissue. (Act of July 8, 1870, § 33.)

2. ASSIGNMENTS, GRANTS, AND CONVEYANCES.-Every patent, or any interest therein, shall be assignable in law by an instrument in writing; and the patentee, or his assigns or legal representatives, may, in like manner, grant and convey an exclusive right under his patent to

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the whole or any specified part of the United States; and said assignment, grant, or conveyance shall be void as against any subsequent purchaser or mortgagee for a valuable consideration without notice, unless it is recorded in the Patent Office within three months from the date thereof. (Act of July 8, 1870, § 36.)

(As to right of assignee in cases of reissue, vide supra, p. 556. In cases of extension, p. 603.)

3. INTERESTS WHICH MAY BE CONVEYED.-A patent may be assigned, either as to the whole interest or any undivided part thereof, by any instrument in writing. No particular form of words is necessary to constitute a valid assignment, nor need the instrument be sealed, witnessed, or acknowledged; and a patent will, upon request, issue directly to the assignee or assignees of the entire interest in any invention, or to the inventor and the assignee jointly, when an undivided part only of the entire interest has been conveyed. When the patent is to issue in the name of the assignee, the entire correspondence should be in his name. The patentee may grant and convey an exclusive right under his patent to the whole or any specified portion of the United States, by an instrument in writing; or he may convey separate rights under his patent to make or to use or to sell his invention, or he may convey territorial or shop rights, which are not exclusive. Such conveyances are mere licenses, and need not be recorded. (Patent Office Rules, July, 1870.)

What if Congress provides for three kinds of assignments: first, as to the whole interest; second, as to an undivided part; and, third, an exclusive right in any district, (Blanchard v. Eldridge, 1 Wall., 330;) but the stat

ute renders the monopoly capable of subdivision as to locality, and in no other way. The patentee cannot carve out his monopoly, which is a unity, into a hundred or more, all acting in the same place and liable to come. into conflict. (Ib.; Whittemore v. Cutter, 1 Gall., 431; Suydam v. Day, 2 Blatchf., 23.)

He cannot divide his right into parts and grant to one man the right to use it in its connection with or application to one thing, and to another in connection with a different thing, to such an extent as that purchasers from any of these persons may not use the fabric exactly as they like. (The Washing-Machine Company v. Earle, 3 Wall.,-.)

When the patentee sells the right to make, use, and vend the invention in a particular place, the purchaser buys a portion of the franchise which the patent confers; but the purchaser of a patented implement or machine for use in the ordinary pursuits of life stands on a different ground. By virtue of the contract of sale and the unconditional delivery of a patented article, it passes outside the monopoly, and is no longer under the peculiar protection granted to patent rights, (Goodyear v. Beverly Rubber Company, 1 Clifford, 348;) and when the patentee of certain processes and the products thereof, for a valuable consideration, sold the patented article, both the manufactured article and the materials of which it was composed passed to the purchaser, discharged of the peculiar privileges secured by the patent, and the purchaser may use the material in the manufacture of other articles not themselves protected by the patent, (ib.) and this although the patented article was bought of the patentee's licensee, who was restricted by the

license to a use of the patented product different from that to which it was devoted by the purchaser, (ib;) but where a person had purchased of the owner of the invention certain knitting machines, with which the vendor was accustomed to send a package of needles used in the same, it was held, that the sale of the machines did not carry with it a right to the purchaser to manufacture new needles of the same construction as those sold, when those which he had bought were worn out, although the machines could not be operated without them, and the needles were the patented invention of the seller; the needles, however, being the subject-matter of a different patent from that covering the machine. (Aiken v. Manchester Print Works, 2 Clifford, 435.)

The grant of a machine, with the right to use it, does not import the same privileges under the patent as the sale of the right to make and vend the patented machine, (ib.) In the latter case the purchaser buys a portion of the franchise, and the right he acquires necessarily terminates at the time limited for the continuance of the patent; but in the former, the machine sold passes outside the monopoly, and is no longer under the protection of the patent act, (ib,) and redress for injury in such case must be sought in the State courts, under State laws, and not under the special jurisdiction conferred on the Federal courts by the patent acts. (Ibid.)

4. RECORDING.-Every assignment or grant of an exclusive territorial right must be recorded in the Patent Office within three months from the execution thereof; otherwise, it will be void as against any subsequent purchaser or mortgagee for a valuable consideration without notice; but if recorded after that time, it will protect the

assignee or grantee against any such supsequent purchaser whose assignment or grant is not then on record. (Patent Office Rules, July, 1870.)

In every case where a patent issues or reissues to an assignee the assignment must be recorded at the Patent Office at least five days before the issue of the patent, and the specification must be sworn to by the inventor. (Ib.)

No assignment directing a patent to issue to an assignee will be recognized by the office, nor will any assignment be recorded, unless stamps shall be affixed of the value of five cents for every sheet or piece of paper upon which the same shall be written.

The person using or affixing the stamp must cancel the same by writing thereupon the initials of his name and the date. (lb.)

The receipt of assignments is not generally acknowledged by the office. They will be recorded in their turn within a few days after their reception, and then transmitted to the persons entitled to them. (Ib.)

Three cases of the recording of assignments are provided for by the statute: first, an assignment of the whole patent; second, an assignment of an undivided part thereof; and, third, a grant or conveyance of an exclusive right under the patent within any specified part or portion of the United States. A grant of right, not being exclusive, need not be recorded. (Brooks v. Byam, 2 Story, 542.)

5. RECORDING NOT ESSENTIAL AS BETWEEN THE PARTIES. To render an assignment valid under § 36 of the act of 1870, as between the parties and against strangers, it is not essential that it should be recorded. (McKernan