Court Opinion

ID: 9417328
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 20:08:12.133672+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:21:38.480456
License: Public Domain

*384Mr. Justice Miller
dissenting.
As regards, the right to a patent for an invention like this, ■which can be of use to no one but the government of the United States, and which is, therefore, in effect a contract by the United States that it will not use that which is essential to some of its most important operations without paying to the patentee whatever he may demand for the use .of his invention, I have great doubt,— a doubt which it would have been necessary to solve in this case if the majority of the court had believed the patent sued on valid.
In the opinion just delivered they have held that while the original patent to. Norton might have been valid for some purposes, the reissued patent is void because it is not for the same invention. In this view I do not concur.
The genéral post-office and its branches had long been in search of an instrument -which by one blow —one strike of the hand — would mark the name of the place where a letter Avas mailed and the time, and so deface the postage-stamp on the letter as Avould make it impossible to be used again.
This had been done by the use of a single die, Avhich held the type indicating date, &c., and Avhich Avas 'made to- cover the stamp also, so that the date obliterated the stamp by covering it. For reasons not necessary to mention this did not ansAver, and it became desirable to have an instrument which at one stroke defaced the stamp and made beside, but apart from the stamp, the postmark date.
Many attempts to do this had been made Avith more or less success. Most of them failed because the handle Avhich conveyed the power from the hand of the operator Avas so placed in regard to these tAvo marking instruments that they did not strike Avith entire unity, in point of time, on 'all- the space of the letter to be covered by the two instruments. In my opinion the record sIioavs that Norton Avas the first man to accomplish this result by uniting these two marking instruments by a cross-bar betAveen them, and placing the shank or handle common to them both so precisely in the centre between them on the cross-bar that the stroke brought the type and the obliterating device on to the surface of the paper precisely *385level, and with precision as to time, over ttie space which they were designed to cover.
This, 1 think, was the principal merit of his invention. Connected with it, however, and essential to it, was his device for obliterating the stamp. In his original patent this is described as a cylinder into which is fastened something which receives the indelible ink used to obliterate the stamp, and which imparts it to the surface of the stamp by the blow or strike already mentioned. This, he said in his original patent, was made of wood, cork, rubber, or other suitable material.
It was discovered, by experience, afterwards that iron was a more suitable material than wood, or cork, or rubber, and in the reissue of the patent, on which this action is founded, iron is mentioned as one of these suitable materials.
I do not think this should invalidate the reissue if the original patent was good. If iron was a suitable material it was covered by the original patent. If better than the materials specifically named, that did not exclude it from the original patent nor make the reissue Amid.
Nor do I concur in the opinion that the combination of the printing and erasing instrument by a cross-bar and shank or handle, Avhich brought the force employed in the stroke to act equally and simultaneously on all the surface to be impressed, Avas anticipated by any other patent or any other invention.
It would serve no good' end to go into all the testimony Avith the elaborate care which characterizes the opinion of the court on these disputed points. I therefore content myself with stating the principal points in which I differ with that opinion.