Patentable Invention

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year eighteen hundred and

ninety-three, by

EDWARD S. RENWICK,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

E. R. ANDREWS, PRINTER, ROCHESTER, N. Y,

MANY

PREFACE.

ANY works upon the Law of Patents for Inventions have been published, but they have been written by jurists who have not been mechanics or inventors, and have not been familiar with the working of an inventor's mind. On the other hand, the decisions of the courts upon the question of what constitutes invention have been so contradictory, and of late years have been so frequently at variance with the earlier decisions, that at the present time unless the subject-matter of a patent is wholly new it is practically impossible to presume whether it is likely to be regarded as an invention in the estimation of a court or is not.

The diverse constructions of the law as to what constitutes invention are especially unfortunate in view of the creation of the present nine appellate courts; it being evident that unless these courts shall decide upon some common rules by which invention can be determined and the decisions of the different courts can be harmonized there will result the anomaly that the decisions upon the same subject in one appellate circuit will clash with those in another. What such rules are to be must be determined by the courts, who alone have authority to deal with such matters; but it seems but fair that the views of inventors upon the subject should be considered; and the object of the author in publishing this book has been to endeavor to present these views. The author believes that he has some qualifications for the work because his practice as a Solicitor of

Patents, and as Expert in Patent Causes for forty-three years, and his engagement as Expert in probably a greater number of patent suits than it has fallen to the lot of any other expert to have been connected with, has brought him into intimate relations with inventors; and besides, he is an inventor himself, one of the inventions in which he was concerned, the original self-binding harvester (patented to Watson, Renwick & Watson, May 13, 1851, and to Watson & Renwick, August 16, 1853), of which he was a joint and the principal inventor, being of such importance that the present grain crops of the United States could not be harvested without its use.

Various decisions of the courts are referred to in the subsequent pages, and the book might have been greatly enlarged by multiplying these references and printing them in full. It has however been deemed sufficient to cite only such decisions as are directly to the matters treated of, and to give the references to the reports of them, so that the originals may be examined by those who wish to do so.

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