Court Opinion

ID: 9841814
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-22 20:07:30.506843+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:04:31.680261
License: Public Domain

M-r. Justice Shirks,
after stating the case, delivered the opinion of the court.
It is provided in section 4884 of the Kevised Statutes that “ every patent shall contain ... a grant to the patentee, his heirs, or assigns, for the term of seventeen years, of the exclusive right to make, use, and vend the invention or discovery throughout the United States and Territories thereof; ” and in section 4898 that “ every patent or any interest therein shall be assignable in law by an instrument in writing, and the patentee or his assigns or legal representatives may in like manner grant and convey an exclusive right under his patent to the whole or any specified part of the United States.”
Where the patentee has not parted, by assignment, with any of his original rights, but chooses himself to make and vend a patented article of manufacture, it is obvious that a purchaser can use the article in any part of the United States, and, unless restrained by contract with the patentee, can sell or dispose of the same. It has passed outside of the monopoly, and is no longer under the peculiar protection granted to patented rights. As was said by Mr. Justice Clifford, in Goodyear v. Beverly Rubber Co. (1 Cliff. 348, 354): “ Having manufactured the material and sold it for a satisfactory compensation, whether as material or in the form of a manufactured article, the patentee, so far as that quantity of the product of his invention is concerned, has enjoyed all the rights secured to him by his letters patent, and the manufactured article, and the material of which it is composed, go to the purchaser for a valuable consideration, discharged of all the rights of the patentee previously attached to it, or impressed upon it, by the act of Congress under which the patent was granted.”
Suppose, however, the patentee has exercised his statutory right of assigning by conveying to another an exclusive right under the patent to a specified part of the United States, *662what are the rights of a purchaser of patented articles from the patentee himself within the territory reserved to him? Does he thereby obtain an absolute property in the article, so that he can use and vend it in all parts of the United States, or, if he take the article into the assigned territory, must he again pay for the privilege of using and selling it ? If, as is often the case, the patentee has divided the territory of the United States into twenty or more “specified parts,” must a person who has bought and paid for the patented article in one part, from a vendor having an exclusive right to make and vend therein, on removing from one part of the country to another, pay to the local assignee for the privilege of using and selling his property, or else be subjected to an action for damages as a wrongdoer ? And is there any solid distinction to be made, in such a case, between the right to use and the right to sell ? Can the owner of the patented article hold and deal with it the same as in case of any other description of property belonging to him, and, on his death, does it pass, with the rest of his personal estate, to his legal representatives, and thus, as a part of the assets to be administered, become liable to be sold ?
These are questions which, although already in effect answered by this court in more cases than one, are now to be considered in the state of facts disclosed in this record.
In Wilson v. Rousseau, 4 How. 646, 688, and in Bloomer v. McQuewan, 14 How. 539, it was held that the purchasers of patented machines had the right to continue the use of such machines, without again paying royalty, although the patent was twice extended. In the latter case it appeared that MoQuevvan, the defendant, had purchased his machines, not from the original patentee or from, a territorial assignee, but from a purchaser from the latter. Therefore that case is authority for the proposition that the purchaser of a patented machine has not only the right to continue the use of the machine as long as it exists, but to sell such machine, and that his vendee takes the right to use.
The scope and effect of those decisions were thus expressed by Mr. Justice Clifford, in Mitchell v. Hawley, 16 Wall. 544, *663546, 547: “ Patentees acquire by their letters patent the exclusive right to make and use their patented inventions and to vend to others to be used for the period of time specified in the patent, but when they have made one or more of the things patented, and have vended the same to others to be used, they have parted to that extent with their exclusive, right, as they are never entitled to but one royalty for a patented machine, and consequently a patentee, when he has himself constructed a machine and sold it without any conditions, or authorized another to construct, sell, and d ..diver it, or to construct, use, and operate it, without any conditions, and the consideration has been paid to him for the thing patented, the rule is well established that the patentee must be understood to have parted to that extent with all his exclusive right, and that he ceases to have any interest whatever in the patented machine so sold and delivered or authorized to be constructed and operated. "Where such circumstances appear, the owner of the machine, whether he built it or purchased it, if he has also acquired the right to use and operate it during the lifetime of the patent, may continue to use it until it is worn out, in spite of any and every extension subsequently obtained by the patentee or his assigns.”
These cases were followed, and a step further taken, in the case of Adams v. Burke, 17 Wall. 453, 456. There Lockhart and Seelye owned, by assignment, all the right, title, and interest which patentees had in a certain patented coffin lid, in a circular district of a diameter of ten miles, whereof the city of Boston was the centre. Adams, also by assignment, was the owner of all other rights under the patent. Burke, an undertaker, carried on his business at Natick, and within the territory covered by the patent'as owned by Adams. To a bill for an infringement, filed by Adams in the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Massachusetts, Burke pleaded that the patent coffins used by him in his business were purchased by him from Lockhart and Seelye, and were sold to him without condition or restriction.
The validity of his plea was sustained' by the Circuit Court, and its decree dismissing the bill was affirmed by this court.
*664Mr. Justice Miller, in giving the opinion of the court, said : “ In the essential nature of things, when the patentee, or the person having his right, sells a machine or instrument whose sole value is in its use, he receives the consideration for its use, and he parts with the right to restrict that use. The article, in the language of the court, passes without the limit of the monopoly. That is to say, the patentee, or his assignee, having in the act of sale received all the royalty or consideration which he claims for the use of his invention in that particular machine or instrument, it is open to the use of the purchaser without further restriction on account of the monopoly of the patentee. ... A careful examination of the plea satisfies us that the defendant, who, as an undertaker, purchased each of these coffins, and used it in burying the body which he was employed to bury, acquired the right to this use of it, freed from any claim of the patentee, though purchased within, the ten-mile circle and used without it.”
It is obvious that necessarily the use made by Burke of these coffins involved a sale in every case. He did not put them to his personal use, unless we are permitted to suppose that he was himself buried in each one of the coffins. He bought the coffins for the purpose of selling them to others, and the legal significance of the decision upholding his defence is that a person who buys patented articles from a person who has a right to sell, though within a restricted territory, has a right to use and sell such articles in all and any part of the United States; that when the royalty has once been paid to a party entitled to receive it, the patented article then becomes the absolute, unrestricted property of the purchaser, with the right to sell it as an essential incident of such ownership.
That this was the meaning of this decision, not only appears from the language used, and from the necessary legal effect of the conclusion reached as between the parties, but from the dissenting opinion of Justice Bradley, whose reasoning went wholly upon the assumption that such was its meaning-.
Boesch v. Graff, 133 U. S. 697, is cited by the defendant in error. But it is not out of line with the previous cases. The exact question presented- was whether a dealer residing in the *665United States could purchase in another country articles patented there from a person authorized there to sell them, and import them to and sell them in the United States without the license or consent of the owners of the United States patent, and the court held that the sale of articles in the United States under a United States patent cannot be controlled by foreign laws. In this case neither the patentee or any assignee had ever received any royalty or given any license to use the patented article in any part of the United States.
Hobbie v. Jennison, 149 U. S. 355, is interesting as the last opinion delivered by Mr. Justice Blatchford.
The facts were these: An assignee for ‘ Michigan, of a patent for an improvement in pipes for conveying gas, water, and other fluids, made, sold and delivered in Michigan pipes made according to the patent, knowing that they were to be laid in the streets of a city in Connecticut, a territory the right for which the seller did not own under the patent, and they were laid in that city. An action at law was brought in the Circuit Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Michigan by Hobbie, who was the owner, by assignment, of the patent for the State of Connecticut, against Jennison, who, under his rights as assignee for Michigan, made and sold patented pipes to the Hartford Steam Supply Company, which had a contract to lay pipes in Hartford, Connecticut. A jury was waived, and the cause was tried before Judge Brown, the District Judge, now a member of this court. ■ The decision and judgment of the Circuit Court were in favor oj the defendant, and that judgment was affirmed here.
What was principally discussed was the true interpretation of Adams v. Burke, and an attempt was made to distinguish the case in hand by the fact, made affirmatively to appear, that the sale was made with the knowledge and intention on the part of the defendant that the use would be at Hartford.
But this court was of the opinion that the case of Adams v. Burke was applicable; that the sale was a complete one in Michigan, and that neither the actual use of the pipes in Connecticut, nor a knowledge on the part of the defendant *666that they were intended to be used there, would make him liable.
This brief history of the oases shows that in Wilson v. Rousseau, 4 How. 646, and oases following it, it was held that, as between the owner of a patent on the one side, and a purchaser of an article made under the patent on the other, the payment of a royalty once, or, what is the same thing, the purchase of the article from one authorized by the patentee to sell it, emancipates such article from any further subjection to the patent throughout the entire life of the patent, even if the latter should be by law subsequently extended beyond the term existing at the time of the sale, and that in respect of the time of enjoyment, by those decisions the right of the purchaser, his assigns or legal representatives, is clearly, established to be entirely free from any further claim of the patentee or any assignee ; that in Adams v. Burke, 17 Wall. 453, it was held that, as respects the place of enjoyment, and as between the purchaser of patented articles in one specified part of the territory and the assignee of the patent of another part, the right once legitimately acquired to hold, use, and sell will protect such purchaser from any further subjection to the monopoly; that in Hobbie v. Jennison, 149 U. S. 355, it was held that, as between assignees of different parts of the territory, it is competent for one to sell the patented articles to persons who intend, with the knowledge of the vendor, to take them for use into the territory of thó other.
Upon the doctrine of these cases we think it follows. that one who buys patented articles of manufacture from one authorized to sell them becomes possessed of an absolute property in such articles, unrestricted in time or place. Whether a patentee may protect himself and his assignees by special contracts brought home to the purchasers is not a question before us,'and upon which we express no opinion. It is, however, obvious that such a question would arise as a question of contract, and not as one under the inherent meaning and effect of the patent laws.
The conclusion reached does not deprive a patentee of his just rights, because ho article can be unfettered from the claim *667of his monopoly without paying its tribute. The inconvenience and annoyance to the public that an opposite conclusion would occasion are too obvious to require illustration.
These views render it unnecessary to consider other features of the case.
The decree of the court below is reversed, and the cause remanded with directions to dismiss the bill.

Reversed.