woven fabric, or there may be a new means of producing an old article at less price; the latter has the advantage of being at once appreciated by the public, however unwelcome to the existing trade, whose machinery it supplants, or at all events depreciates. The latter class of invention. is posterior in date, it only occurs when the demand for the article has become extensive. The word "manufacture," taken with the words "working" or "making," includes both classes (Morgan v. Seaward, 2 M. & W. 544; R. v. Wheeler, 2 B. & Ald. 349), and it will be noticed that the act says, "which others shall not use," i. e. shall not follow or practice ("I do never use it," Merchant of Venice, viz., lending money), the others meaning traders," not the public, who "use" the thing made.

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This general doctrine which has been broadly laid down (Crane v. Price, Webs. P. C. 409), is narrowed by some recent cases which, admitting the competency of a new machine for an old purpose, reject a new process for a similar end. Now the common law (Crane v. Price) speaks of engine and device, and also of trade, art, and trafique; and the word "art" can hardly mean a new product, or a new apparatus: (Boulton v. Bull, 2 H. Bl. 492.) The statute was not meant to restrict the common law on this point, it was worded to "preclude nice refinements, and be for the benefit of trade" (Boulton v. Bull, 2 H. Bl. 482; R. v. Arkwright, Webs. P. C. 71.) Lord Eldon (Hill v. Thompson, Webs. P. C. 237), and L. C. J. Tindal (Webs. P. C. 409), evidently bear out the admissibility of a new process; but in Dobb v. Penn (3 Ex. 427), it was said that Crane's patent is only supportable on the ground of a new iron produced. This indeed suggests a mode of escape, for a new process rarely gives exactly the old result, or employs exactly the same apparatus; but it is absurd to be driven to such distinction, when a broad individuality lies before you. If abstract theory is to be employed, any process may be reduced to a machine or substance—the process of causing effervescence, for instance, might be

referred to the substance consisting of acid and alkali at the point of mutual action, and Crane's patent was the substance of certain fuel and of hot air, which, by coinciding, formed an apparatus capable of smelting. It may be remarked, that music, which lies in motion, an æsthetic process, is as much matter of copyright as drawing or sculpture; and the tune is the music, not the symbols of notation. This point is intimately connected with the maxim, that a new application of an old thing, or a double use, as it is sometimes called, is no invention-a mere abstract proposition, right or wrong, as it is employed; for it is easy to describe any patent as an "application" of known elements, &c., it is generally stated, with such illustrations, as making a teapot of silver instead of earthenware (Walker v. Congreve, 29 Rep. Art., 2nd series), the inventive merit of which is wholly a question of fact. If a wheel is used upon common roads (Losh v. Hague, Webs. P. C. 207), and then railroads are invented, it requires no invention to transfer the wheel to the latter, always supposing no special difficulty arises to be overcome. Any ingenuity in so adapting it, or in altering the form of a teapot to suit it for a new material, is an invention in manufacturing, and a subject for a patent. Coke's objection (3 Inst. 181) to patenting an addition (which would include an improvement) is exploded, save in the sense that you must not add to and then claim the whole. Illustrations of the quantum of invention will be found in Mackintosh's patent (2 Carpm. Rep. P. C. 188); Newall's (26 Newton Lond. Journ., C. S. 52); Brunton's (4 B. & Ald. 550), which affords a negative and positive instance); Howard's patent (Carpm. Rep. P. C. 241), which was scarcely disputed, was for boiling sugar by a process already employed for boiling liquids.

Lord Abinger's amusing illustrations (Losh v. Hague, Webs. P. C. 207) must be taken cautiously. No doubt there could not be an invention in cutting paper with

scissors after seeing them used to cut cloth; a surgeon would as surely become an inventor, by applying them in his operations, adding a knob at the point, to prevent their penetrating adjacent parts; but the presence of any such new implement or apparatus, or part of one, seems not always necessary (Hall v. Boot, Webs. P. C. 100), when of the question was, whether singing with gas flame, instead oil flame, was an invention, though the court seem to have relied on some (small) difference in the mechanism. But the change of process may be material, and the change in the apparatus trivial. The illustration of eating peas with a spoon (Webs. P. C. 208), instead of soup with a spoon, fails, because eating peas is not a manufacture; but it seems by no means certain that there was no ingenuity in the transfer of idea, and quality of ingenuity is not stipulated for by the patent (Soames' patent, Webs. P. C. 734), nor indeed are there any means of any golden scales for, weighing it. The least thing (Edwards v. Da Costa, Repertory of P. I., No. 681) may make the difference between failure and success. In Soames' patent (Webs. P. C. 734) the change was trifling, but it was a step in the manufacture; in the latter case, a small alteration changed theory into fact, and a unit of invention may be multiplied by any amount of commercial value. Besides, "the simplicity of an invention, so far from being an objection to it, may constitute its great excellence and value. Indeed, to produce a great result by very simple means, is not unfrequently the peculiar characteristic of the very highest class of mind" (Justice Story); and see Galloway v. Bleaden, Webs. P. C. 525.

The addition of the last link (Cornish v. Keene, Webs. P.C. 508) may decide the right to the whole chain; but there must have been some difficulty to overcome, or why did previous inventors not complete their work, and anything short of an entire circuit is to the public utterly unavailing. There was a beautiful idea for preventing the corrosion of copper sheathing; the galvanic agency, instead of ranging the

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whole surface of the ship's bottom, was to be allured to certain points of zinc. Scientifically, this was excellent; but, by keeping the copper free of its poisonous coating, it made a lodgment for barnacles, &c., creating an inconvenience which led to the entire disuse of the plan. A very valuable patent was afterwards obtained by slightly changing the terms of the problem and a modification of the principle, allowing a slight film of verdigris only to deter the shellfish: (24 Newton Lond. Journ., C. S. 300.)

One of the old cases (R. v. Wheeler, 2 B. & Ald. 350) held the new employment of a higher temperature to be abstractedly capable of being a patentable invention, and it will be obvious that the result of such an alteration could not be foreseen. This case is maintained and illustrated by two recent and well-considered decisions, which may be regarded as accurate exponents of the question as to amount of invention; and also (as to the first of them), on the capability of a process to be patented. In Steiner v. Heald (2 C. & K. 1022; and 17 L. T. 131) it appeared that a substance called "garancine" had been extracted from madder; it was notorious that madder, which was still used in a crude state, was not wholly used up in dyeing; that the refuse contained some of this extract, or garancine. The patent was simply for using to this spent madder the same process which extracted the garancine from the fresh root. It was held, after much argument, a question of fact whether this were a manufacture. The case had not the advantage of prior efforts failing to discover it, or of the general process having been long known, and not so applied; but there seems to have been only the uncertainty that the madder passing through the dye-vat, might not have acquired new properties, so that it was not certain à priori that the ordinary process would succeed.

In the electric telegraph case (20 L. J., 123, C. B.), one claim was for the use of intermediate stations and electric circuits, the feasibility of which an electrician would hardly have doubted, but which, till experimentally

verified, was not in the possession of the public. The case exhibits a wholesome aversion to the argument, that "any body might have seen that"; "I always thought so."

We have spoken of an invention as something not previously in actual existence; it is essential that the inventor, however, be actually possessed of it; and the question of no manufacture often leads to that of utility, as meaning something solid, an embodied principle: (Jape v. Pratt, Webs. P. C. 150; Morgan v. Seaward, Webs. P. C. 185; The Househill Co. v. Neilson, Webs. P. C. 683.) A scientific truth, a discovery is not even an attempt at a manufacture, and a theory of art must be realized before it becomes a marketable commodity.

Utility, again, may be a quality of the result; the statute says, any manner of new manufacture; this, though probably a mere expletive, has perhaps helped a liberal construction of the word, which has been expanded to almost as wide a range as the term "invention," or the common law expressions antecedent to the act, "device," "art," &c.; thus, architectural and engineering work, as a railway or an arch, is deemed a manufacture. The rules on this head have been said to be negative; ornament is excluded apparently, but not anything (pigment, &c.) used to produce it; there seems, however, to have been in one case a patent for a book of designs: (Gibbs v. Cole, 3 P. Wil. 255.) Financial schemes and arrangements are also inadmissible. Such discoveries as the Overland Route, and the mode of finding the longitude, though instances of applied science, cannot conveniently be worked into patents.

It is hardly necessary to cite authority that a negative result, as preventing fire (Hartley, Webs. P. C. 55), or dispensing with part of a machine or superfluous operation (Russell v. Cowley, Webs. P. C. 466), may be useful. The objections of Coke to a patent which throws labouring men out of work, refer to a part of the statute which is practically laid aside; and it will be understood that commercial value is the test of utility; new processes, and the use of