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industry;" which, taken in its full extent, comprehends things not embraced by the language of either the English or American law, taken in its widest construction, though the words of these laws, taken in their broadest signification, include subjects which cannot be brought within the French law; or, at least, this is the case with the American law, for the words art and machine, may be applied to things not included under discoveries or inventions in industry. The truth is, that the practical construction, given to the three laws, in regard to the kinds of invention that are patentable, is substantially the same.

If we take all these expressions in connexion, we shall obtain a pretty accurate, general notion of the kinds of subjects intended by each of these laws, for the subject of the patent must, in the language of the French law, be an invention or discovery in industry; but under the construction given to that law, not every invention or discovery in industry is patentable; then the word manufacture points out the species of discovery or invention intended to be protected; but lest this word, though by a liberal construction it is applicable to all the proper and all the intended objects of encouragement by the law, should receive too narrow an interpretation, the act of Congress adds what in fact amounts to a liberal construction of the word manufacture, by expressly extending the act to any art, machine, or composition of matter. But it will be evident that we must accept the ex

pressions art, and composition of matter, in this case, with large restrictions, since the word art is applied to mere skill, and yet it will appear very obviously that any discovery in the mode of managing the hands or limbs, or the instrument used, such as is comprehended under the expressions skill, or address, as in horsemanship, in steering a ship, or playing on a musical instrument, cannot be made the subject of monopoly, and if it could be, that any such monopoly would be most pernicious. We must then resort to manufacture, and in the English law, and our own, to limit the construction to be put upon the other expressions used in our law.

In examining more particularly the kinds of subjects covered by the law of patents, it is difficult to distinguish and arrange them into different classes, under the various expressions which have been used to designate them, since these expressions are all of very various, and not very definite signification, and, besides, the subject has been perplexed, by a loose use of these expressions in the opinions of courts in patent cases, and also by the use of the same expression in different senses. The discussions on this subject in the cases, afford a striking illustration of the remark already cited, that we are occupied with a branch of jurisprudence which may aptly be denominated the metaphysics of the law; since, in the subtile and nice distinctions often requisite, and still oftener attempted than requisite,

language fails to supply adequate and precise phraseology, so that we are without the usual help to satisfactory speculation, that is, clear language, intelligible to every one, which proves, in this, as in other cases, a double hindrance, first to clear and discriminating thinking, and second, to the ready and perspicuous communication of thought. As the different expressions used in describing patentable subjects are very analogous to each other in signification, and are mutually blended and implicated together in their meaning, and in the application made of them in the cases, the most convenient mode of treating of them, at least the most concise, will be to enumerate them all, and examine them successively, without confining ourselves rigidly to that order, to do which, much repetition would be requisite, without rendering the subject any clearer.

The expressions by which patentable subjects have been defined and described, then, are, first, those used in the laws already enumerated, viz. invention, discovery, manufacture, art, machine, composition of matter, and others used in the cases, viz. a method, principle, application of a principle, process, effect, result, product, device, combination.

Sec. II.-MANUFACTURE.

The term most discussed in the English reports, as descriptive of the kinds of subjects for which patents may be granted, is the description given in the

statute of 21 James I., and also one of the descriptions in the act of Congress of 1793, namely, manufacture. The subject was much discussed in the cases arising on Watt's patent for an improvement in the steam engine. In one of these cases, Lord Chief Justice Eyre thus explains this term. He says that the exposition of the Statute of 21 James I. c. 3, as far as usage will expound it, has gone very much beyond the letter. In 2 Salkeld, 447, the words "new devices" are substituted and used as synonymous with the words "new manufacture." It was admitted in the argument at the bar, that the word "manufacture," in the statute, was of extensive signification, that it applied not only to things made, but to the practice of making, to principles carried into practice in a new manner, to new results of principles carried into practice. Let us pursue this admission. Under things made, we may class, in the first place, new compositions of things, such as manufactures in the most ordinary sense of the word; secondly, all mechanical inventions, whether made to produce old or new effects; for a new piece of mechanism is certainly a thing made. Under the practice of making, we may class all new artificial manners of operating with the hand, or with instruments in common use, new processes in any art, producing effects useful to the public.2

* Boulton v. Bull, 2. H. Bl. 481.

In the same case, Mr. Justice Heath gives the following exposition of this term : "What are new manufactures within the scope of the proviso of the statute 21 Jac. 1? Such as are reducible to two classes. The first class includes machinery, the second, substances (such as medicines) formed by chemical and other processes, where the vendible substance is the thing produced, and that which operates preserves no permanent form. In the first class, the machine, and in the second, the substance produced, is the subject of the patent. I approve of the term manufacture in the statute, because it precludes all nice refinements; it gives us to understand the reason of the proviso, that it was introduced for the benefit of trade.'

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Lord Kenyon, in one of the same class of cases, defines the word according to its etymology; considering it to be something made by the hands of man."

In a subsequent case we find the same term thus explained by Lord Chief Justice Abbott: "The word 'manufacture,' in the statute 21 Jac. 1. c. 3, has been generally understood to denote either a thing made, which is useful for its own sake, and vendible as such, as a medicine, a stove, a telescope, and many others, or to mean an engine, or instru

* Boulton v. Bull, 2. H. Bl. 492.

* Hornblower v. Boulton, 8. T. R. 99.

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