. CASES oratory, interested in such devices, and in a position to have seen this one; that he himself states that he saw it; and that his testimony is corroborated, we hold that Conner and not Dean was the original inventor. And, in reaching this conclusion we are not unmindful of the well-recognized and salutary rule that the burden is heavily upon the party who has slept on his rights while another has given the invention to the public. We have examined the record with care and are convinced that the circumstances surrounding Conner at the time he made the invention are consistent with and corroborative of the affirmative testimony that he, and not Dean, was the original and real inventor. The decision of the Commissioner of Patents is reversed, and the clerk of the court will certify this opinion and the proceedings in this court to the Commissioner of Patents, as required by law. [Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia.] WAINWRIGHT . PARKER. Decided February 2, 1909. 142 O. G., 1115; 32 App. D. C., 431. APPLICATION-DATE-DISCLOSURE IN PRIOR PATENT TO SAME PARTY. An application disclosing and claiming subject-matter disclosed in a patent granted prior to the filing of such application cannot be considered as a continuance of the prior application, since after the application has eventuated into a patent there is nothing left pending before the Patent Office upon which it could act or to which the later application could attach. (Citing Spitteler, C. D., 1908, 374; 134 O. G., 1301; 31 App. D. C., 271. Smith v. Goodyear Dental Vulcanite Co., C. D., 1877, 171; 11 O. G., 246; 93 U. S., 487; and Cain v. Park, C. D., 1899, 278; 86 O. G., 797; 14 App. D. C., 43, distinguished.) Mr. D. Walter Brown for the appellant. Mr. Joseph L. Atkins for the appellee. VAN ORSDEL, J.: This is an appeal from a decision of the Commissioner of Patents in an interference proceeding affirming the decision of the Board of Examiners-in-Chief, which, in turn, had affirmed the decision of the Examiner of Interferences, awarding judgment of priority of invention to appellee on the following issue: The combination with a curb of concrete construction of an angle-plate and a central end wise-disposed web, said web being provided throughout its extent with a series of spacious circumscribed apertures that are respectively penetrated by and filled with the concrete material of the curb. Appellee filed his application on April 15, 1905, and a patent was issued thereon on October 6, 1906. Having taken no testimony, he is restricted to his filing date. Appellant filed his application on January 21, 1907. The only evidence submitted on his behalf is a certified copy of an application filed by him on March 8, 1900. It appears that this application, as originally presented, disclosed four different species, among which was a device similar to that involved in this interference. Claims sufficient in scope to cover all of these species were originally included, but, after repeated objections by the Primary Examiner, the application was limited, without appeal, to one of the species, and the drawings, specification, and claims were so amended as to eliminate all reference to the device involved in this interference. In this condition, the application was allowed and went to patent on May 5, 1903. It is contended by counsel for appellant that the present application of appellant and the one upon which his patent was issued constitute a continuous transaction, and, therefore, he is entitled to the benefit of the latter application as a constructive reduction to practice. Appellant delayed nearly four years after the issuance of his patent before filing the application here in interference. His original application having eventuated into a patent, there was nothing left pending before the Patent Office upon which it could act, or to which the later application could attach. In this respect, the case at bar differs from the case of Smith v. Goodyear Dental Vulcanite Co., (C. D., 1877, 246; 11 O. G., 171; 93 U. S., 487,) upon which the appellant relies. There, the first application was filed in 1855, and, after three rejections by the Patent Office, no action was again taken until 1864. While the court held, delay being excused because of the ill health and pecuniary condition of the applicant, that the later application was a continuation of the first, it must be remembered that the original application was before the Office during the entire period between the last Office rejection and the filing of the subsequent application, which, having substantially the same specification and the same drawings, operated as a renewal of, and could relate back and attach to, the former. That the court took this view of the case is shown by the following: No act of Cummings amounted to a withdrawal of his first petition, or to an acquiescence in its rejection. It is true, he filed a second petition in 1864; but he accompanied it with substantially the specification that remained in the Office, and with the same drawings. It was a mode of procuring another consideration of his rejected claim, and the Commissioner regarded it as such. * We are not aware that filing a second petition for a patent, after the first has been rejected, has ever been regarded as severing the second application from the first, and depriving the applicant of any advantage he would have enjoyed had the patent been granted without a renewal of the application. The application here under consideration cannot be considered as a renewal of the former. A patent had been granted upon appellant's original application, and for four years there had been nothing pending before the Patent Office; there was no "specification that remained in the Office." The case of Cain v. Park, (C. D., 1899, 278; 86 O. G., 797; 14 App. D. C., 43,) also relied upon by appellant, is not in point. There, the applicant had failed to pay the final Office fee on his application, and a new application had been filed within the statutory period of two years. The court simply held that the two applications were continuous and that the former was a constructive reduction to practice. This application must, therefore, be regarded, not as a renewal, but as in the nature of a divisional application, and should be governed by the ruling in in re Spitteler, (C. D., 1908, 374; 134 O. G., 1301; 31 App. D. C., 271,) where the Court said: But, having amended that application so as to conform to the ruling of the Examiner, it was merged in the patent issued thereon. After that there was no application pending in the Office as a foundation for division. The proceeding having been closed by the issue of the patent, there was nothing to be continued. The rule which permits a divisional application to relate back to the filing date of the original which also discloses its subject-matter, as long as it remains open in the Patent Office, is a very liberal one that sometimes works hardship upon intermediate inventors, and it ought not to be extended to cases not clearly within it. It must be held that appellant is not entitled to the date of his original application for reduction to practice; and the application here in interference must stand or fall upon its own merits. Appellant, therefore, being the junior party, and having failed to overcome the burden of proof thus placed upon him, judgment of priority must be awarded to appellee. The decision of the Commissioner is affirmed, and the clerk is directed to certify these proceedings as required by law. [Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia.] TOWNSEND v. THULLEN. Decided March 2, 1909. 142 O. G., 1116; 32 App. D. C., 575. INTERFERENCE-PRIORITY-RIGHT TO MAKE CLAIM. A disclosure in an application which is sufficiently specific to enable persons skilled in the art to readily construct and use the invention constitutes a compliance with section 4888, Revised Statutes, (Hopkins v. Newman, C. D., 1908, 395; 134 O. G., 2028; 30 App. D. C., 402;) but in an application for an automatic signaling system involving an inductive bond em ployed to bridge the rails a general reference to "transformers" does not entitle the applicant to amplify his description by adding thereto a description of a particular kind of transformer and make claims thereto, although such construction may have been old in the art when the application was originally filed. Mr. E. C. Brown for the appellant. Mr. George E. Cruse for the appellee. SHEPARD, C. J.: This appeal involves priority of invention between Townsend and Thullen of an improvement in inductive bonds employed to bridge the rails of an electric railway at each end of a block-section thereof. The rails of such tracks are usually electrically continuous so that the propulsion-current which flows from the motors may return to the source of generation. In separating a track into block-sections for track-signaling it is necessary to provide a means by which the signaling-current of each section may be kept separate from the signaling-current of adjacent blocks. These insulating means would interrupt the electrical continuity of the track-rails, and destroy their usefulness as return-conductors for the propelling-current, unless conductors are provided to bridge the insulated gaps and make a path for the return-current of the motors, while choking back the alternating signaling-current. As stated in the appellant's brief: The operation of the inductive bond depends upon the following well-known laws of electromagnetism, viz.: that when an electric current traverses a conductor a magnetic effect is produced, called a magnetic field or magnetic fluxand if the conductor be formed into a loop or turn, opposite magnetic poles will be manifested upon opposite sides of the loop. If the conductor be formed into a series of adjacent turns, or a coil, the magnetic effect will be cumulative, the separate loops or turns of the coil being mutually assisting producing a strong magnetic field, or inductive effect. This is the effect when the electric current flows through one of the inductive bonds from end to end. The magnetism thus set up reacts upon the electric current to oppose or check its passage through the coil. In order that there may be no opposition to the passage of the car-propulsion current through the coiled conductor of the inductive bonds, which is the object of the cases involved in this interference, it is necessary to prevent the formation of a magnetic field by the passage of the electric current. It has long been known that when two conductors are placed side by side throughout their length, and equal electric currents are sent through them in opposite directions, the magnetic effect produced in one conductor will nullify or destroy that produced in the other so that no magnetic effect will be produced by the passage of the current in either conductor. When the two conductors are wound into a coil no magnetism will be manifested in the coil if equal and opposite currents are sent through the separate conductors so wound, provided they are wound side by side throughout their length. The appellee says: The inductive bonds of both the appellant and the appellee are designed to conduct the direct current from the car-motors through their windings without appreciable magnetization of the cores and at the same time impede the passage of alternating signaling-currents. An inductance-bond (usually composed of a copper conductor wound around an iron core) has the property of conducting the direct current freely and of impeding or choking back alternating current; but when a direct current is passed through the coil of such inductance-bond the iron core immediately becomes magnetized, and the magnetization tends to impair the power of the coil to impede the alternating signaling-current. If two coils are placed at the core, and a part of the direct current is sent through one coil in one direction and the remainder through the other in the opposite direction, the magnetizing of the core will be largely neutralized. The degree of neutralization increases as the coils are brought into closer relation, and the greatest degree is obtained when the coils are interwoven or sandwiched. Townsend originally applied for a patent on June 16, 1904, and Thullen on February 27, 1906. This last application passed into a patent granted December 18, 1906. It seems that there had been a prior interference between the same parties, which, while referred to in the present proceedings, is not set out therein. Due to this, apparently, Townsend filed a division of his application on March 14, 1906. After various proceedings he amended his claims, inserting four copied from Thullen's patent which had in the meantime issued. This interference was then declared in four counts embracing said claims. Thullen moved to dissolve the interference on the ground that Townsend had no right to make said claim. The Primary Examiner held that Townsend had the right to make the claim of the first count, but not the right to make the other three. The four read as follows: 1. In a system of automatic block-signaling for electric railways and in combination with the traffic-rails each divided into block-sections by insulated joints, reactance-bonds each bond comprising a core, a coil thereon connected across the trackway, and a conductor connecting the middle point of the coils on adjacent bonds. 2. An inductive bond comprising a core having a plurality of legs or arms, a winding for said core all the turns of which are arranged on the same leg or arm of the core, said winding being in two parts, the turns of which are all in the same direction, and are interposed one with the other and an end of one part electrically connected to the end of the other part to form a middle point of the winding, and a conductor leading from said middle point of the winding. 3. An inductive bond comprising a core having a plurality of legs or arms, a winding for said core all the turns of which are in the same direction, on the same leg or arm of the core, and are interposed one with the other, and a conductor leading from the middle point of the winding. 4. An inductive bond comprising a core having a plurality of legs or arms, and a magnetic circuit of high reluctance, a winding for said core, all the turns |