Court Opinion

ID: 9841811
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-22 20:07:28.637754+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:04:30.148439
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Brown
dissenting.
In the case of Battin v. Taggert, 17 How. 74, it was held by this court that it was for the- jury to judge of the novelty of an invention, and of the identity of the machine used by the defendant, with that of the plaintiffs, and whether they were constructed and acted upon the same principle. And in Bischoff v. Wethered, 9 Wall. 812, it was also held that in a suit at law involving a question of priority of invention, where the patent under consideration was attempted to be invalidated by a prior patent, counsel could not require the court to compare the two specifications and to instruct the jury, as matter of law, whether the inventions described therein were or were not identical. Indeed, I understand it to be a general rule, applicable to all trials by jury, that if there be any conflict of testimony with regard to a particular fact, or if, the facts being admitted, men in' the exercise of reasonable judgment may derive different inferences from such facts, the question is for the jury. Comparing the patent in suit with the various prior patents claimed to anticipate it, it seems to me that the ques*631tion of novelty is by no means so clear as to authorize the court to take the case from the jury, and that the court did not err in submitting it to them.