page_title: Atlantic Works v. Brady
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Atlantic Works v. Brady / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: This is a drawing of the patented device at issue in the case Atlantic Works v. Brady Other information Patent drawings are in the PD
context_page_description: Atlantic Works v. Brady, 107 U.S. 192, is a patent infringement decision of the United States Supreme Court, noted for this criticism of allowing patents on trivial inventions that encourage speculators:
  The design of the patent laws is to reward those who make some substantial discovery or invention which adds to our knowledge and makes a step in advance in the useful arts. Such inventors are worthy of all favor. It was never the object of those laws to grant a monopoly for every trifling device, every shadow of a shade of an idea.. .. Such an indiscriminate creation of exclusive privileges tends rather to obstruct than to stimulate invention. It creates a class of speculative schemers who make it their business to watch the advancing wave of improvement, and gather its foam in the form of patented monopolies, which enable them to lay a heavy tax upon the industry of the country, without contributing anything to the real advancement of the arts.
context_section_description: Edwin L. Brady obtained a patent on boats for dredging under water. The patented dredge boat consisted of "a strong boat, propelled [preferably] by  . . . two propellers placed in the stern of the boat" and driven by a steam engine.  The use of two propellers made "the boat more manageable in steering in crooked channels." Near the bow of the boat, Brady placed another steam engine driving a "mud fan," like a propeller but with sharper blades, extending two feet below the bottom of the boat. "[T]heir object is, by their rapid revolution, to displace the sand and mud on the bottom and, stirring them up, to mix them with the water so that they may be carried off by the current." The boat has a series of watertight compartments into or out of which water is pumped so as to sink the vessel to the required depth for dredging.
  Brady claimed as his invention:
      1. A dredging boat constructed with a series of watertight compartments so proportioned and arranged that as they are filled with water, the boat shall preserve an even keel and the dredging mechanism be brought into action without any adjusting devices, substantially as set forth.
      2. The combination of the mud fan attached to a rigid shaft, and a boat containing a series of watertight compartments, so adjusted as to cause the boat to settle on an even keel as the compartments are filled with water, and a pump, for exhausting the water from all the compartments, substantially as set forth.
  Atlantic Works of Boston constructed a dredge boat of the same construction as that described in Brady's patent. He sued for patent infringement in the circuit court, seeking an injunction and "an account of all such gains and profits as they, the respondents, have received by their unlawful and wrongful acts and doings." The case was tried before Supreme Court Justice Clifford, as Circuit Justice. He sustained the patent and found it infringed.
caption: Drawing of Brady's dredging boat, from his patent
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