Source: https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Mowry_v._Whitney
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 13:23:29+00:00

Document:
Asa Whitney, of Philadelphia, had obtained, on the 25th April, 1848, a patent for fourteen years for an improvement in annealing and cooling cast-iron car-wheels. This patent expired, of course, by its terms on the 25th of April, 1862.
Just before its expiration, that is to say, on the 21st of March, Albert Mowry, of Cincinnati, also obtained a patent for fourteen years, for a process for annealing car-wheels, of which he professed to be the inventor.
Whitney did furnish to the commissioner a statement, which purported to be such as the act required; and accordingly the extension was granted April 25th, 1862, for seven years from that date, or in other words, until 25th of April, 1869.
Hereupon, April 7th, 1870, Mowry filed a bill in chancery in the court below, representing the fact of Whitney's patent, and of the extension of it (annexing as exhibits all the patent, the certificate of extension, and all the affidavits and estimates on which the extension had been granted); setting forth his own patent, that he was sued by Whitney in a suit still pending; that in the progress of investigation necessary to his defence in that suit he had discovered the fraud by which the extension was obtained, and praying that it might be declared that Whitney's letters, granted on the 25th of April, 1848, and extended on the 7th of April, 1862, were, and are void and of no effect from and after the 25th of April, 1862.
2. That it appeared by the bill that the term for which the letters-patent sought to be cancelled were granted and extended had expired before the commencement of the suit.
The bill charging and the demurrer confessing that the extension was procured by fraud, the extended patent must be regarded as void, ab initio, and as conferring no monopoly upon the patentee as against the public or the complainant.
The extension of the patent having been confessedly procured fraudulently, and the government not being able to maintain a suit in relation to the patent by reason of its expiration, and having no further interest in it, the suit was properly and could only be brought by one who had a continuing interest in the patent, and whose rights were, notwithstanding its expiration, affected by it.
The primary object of the suit is that the complainant may be relieved from a prosecution whic is contrary to equity and good conscience, and the court is asked to find and declare that the patent, having been procured fraudulently, was ipso facto void as antecedent to obtaining the relief prayed for.
There is no provision of law for any such proceeding as this to repeal a patent; and any proceeding for that purpose must be at the instance of the government. Instead of this bill being filed by the authority or with the consent of the government, it is on its face filed by an adjudged infringer against a patentee whose rights he has invaded, and whose statute remedy he now seeks to enjoin.
The demurrer admits the facts stated in the bill only so far as they are relevant and well pleaded. On the complainant's own showing, the allegations of fraud and suppressions and concealment stated in the bill are refuted by the exhibits annexed thereto and making part thereof.
The bill shows that the extended term of the respondent's patent expired April 24th, 1869, while this proceeding was not commenced until April 7th, 1870, nearly twelve months thereafter.
^1 Act of May 27th, 1848, 6 Stat. at Large, 231, amending the act of July 4th, 1836; 5 Id. 124.
^2 For an account of this controversy see infra, p. 621.
^3 5 Stat. at Large, 124.
^4 Patent Laws, act of 1870, § 55.
^6 Wood v. Williams, 1 Gilpin, 517.
^7 Rubber Co. v. Goodyear, 9 Wallace, 805; Lord v. Goddard, 13 Howard, 198(211); Truly v. Wanzer, 5 Id. 141(143).
^8 Bourne v. Goodyear, 9 Wallace, 811; Minnesota Co. v. National Co., 3 Id. 332.

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