21. S. Patio & allele OF THE COMMISSIONER OF PATENTS FOR THE YEAR 1873, WITH TABLE OF CASES ARRANGED ACCORDING TO SUBJECT- WASHINGTON: GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 1874. DECISIONS OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF PATENTS FOR THE YEAR 1873. H. W. COLLENDER. Extension. IN THE MATTER OF THE APPLICATION OF H. W. COLLENDER FOR THE EXTENSION OF LETTERS PATENT NO. 22,591, FOR AN IMPROVEMENT IN BILLIARD-CUE TIPS, GRANTED JANUARY 4, 1859. (Decided January 4, 1873.) An extension will not be granted on an unimportant part of an original patent, the principal feature of the same having been discarded and a secret compound substituted therefor. The policy of the Government is to protect such inventions as are so candidly explained that the public is placed in full possession of the process when the term of the patent has expired. It is not the policy of the Government to extend a patent which is to be used to cover, by inference, a process which has not been disclosed in the specification and is secretly carried out. THACHER, Acting Commissioner : The invention is set forth in the patent to be "a new article of manufacture, to wit, billiard-cue tips or cue-leathers, with their flat surface coated with soluble gum or cement, so that by the application of moisture they can always and immediately be applied to the end of the cue in a permanent manner." There was no invention in simply making the tips adhesive. This could have been done by applying to the flat surface any of the wellknown adhesive compounds in use at the time for gumming stamps and other like articles. But, owing to the special use to which the tips were to be put, it was necessary that the adhesive compound should have peculiar qualities. The gist of the invention, then, or it may be said the whole invention, consisted in the discovery of a compound or cement which would answer the purpose. A suitable cement is described in the patent as composed of gumarabic, gelatine, and isinglass, dissolved and mixed in certain stated. proportions. Mr. Collender states in his testimony, however, that this compound was used only about a month after the grant of the patent. Experiments led to the adoption of another compound, which has proved a complete success, and led to a quite general use of self-adhesive cue-tips. But the composition of this new cement has been kept a secret, and the manufacture of the tips by this means retained exclusively in the hands of the patentee. The utility and value of the self-adhesive tips are thus made to depend almost solely upon an invention which has never been disclosed to the public. It is true, applicant declares that the compound described in the patent will make a serviceable tip, but his own course, discarding it for something else, proves conclusively that even in his own estimation it possesses no value in competition with the secret compound of later date; and it was admitted by his counsel in argument that if the extension should be refused, the monopoly of the manufacture would still be retained by Collender. The extension of the patent, therefore, would only aid the patentee in preserving the secret which he now holds, and at its expiration, at the end of seven years, the public would derive no benefit, for it would become possessed of nothing valuable. This, in my opinion, constitutes an insuperable objection to the extension sought, and although the case is a good one in all other particulars, I do not believe it would be right, under the circumstances stated, to grant the prayer of the petitioner. The extension is refused. CALISTA E. COX. APPEAL FROM THE PRINCIPAL EXAMINER IN THE MATTER OF THE APPLICATION OF CALISTA E. COX, EXECUTRIX, ETC., FOR THE REISSUE IN FOUR DIVISIONS OF LETTERS PATENT No. 7,813, for IMPROVEMENT IN HORSE-RAKES, GRANTED TO HARVEY W. SABIN, DECEMBER 3, 1850. (Decided January 10, 1873.) Practice under rule 44-Reissues. That a claim has been sustained in the United States courts does not remove it from the operation of the law, which requires that "every such case shall be subject to revision and restriction in the same manner as original applications are.” A participial claim to " arranging " devices, instead of to the devices themselves, having been granted under a former more lax practice, should—although in the mean time it has been sustained by the courts-be made to conform to the present practice in revising the application for reissue. THACHER, Acting Commissioner: The Examiner objects to certain portions of the description in several divisions and to some of the claims, the objections, as a whole, including all the divisions of the reissue application. |