CASES RESPECTING PATENTS OF INVENTION, AND THE RIGHTS OF PATENTEES. IN THE COURT OF KING'S BENCH. Edgeberry v. Stephens. A GRANT of a monopoly may be to the first inventor, by the 21 Jac. 1. and if the invention be new in England, a patent may be granted, though the thing was practised beyond the sea before; for the statute speaks of new manufactures within this realm, so that, if they be new here, it is within the statute: for the act intended to encourage new devices useful to the kingdom, and whether learned by travel or by study, it is the same thing. Agreed by Holt and Pollexfen in this case. 37 IN THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS. Arkwright v. Nightingale. 17 Feb. 1785. THIS was an action brought for an infringement upon a patent granted to the plaintiff, for certain instruments and machines for preparing silk, cotton, flax, and wool, for spinning. The patent was dated 16 Dec. 16 Geo. 3, and the specification inrolled the 13th April following. Mr. Serjeant Adair, for the plaintiff, said, that he was the better enabled to state the subject of the dispute between the parties, because he had been furnished with experience from a former and incomplete discussion of this question in another place, where the decision had been against the plaintiff, he having been nonsuited. The cause in the court where it was before tried, was not understood either by the court, the jury, the counsel, or the witnesses. It was no imputation upon them to say, that in that stage of the business they neither did nor could understand the real question to be tried, because the objections came by surprise upon the parties. Mr. Arkwright, relying upon his own skill, had supposed, that every lawyer must necessarily be an ingenious mechanic, but in this he was mistaken; as many are not informed of the principles of mechanics, and, if informed of the principles, they are ignorant of the practice. The ingenious and able mechanics who were examined upon that occasion, were some of them unacquainted with the principles of the manufactory to which that machine was to be applied, and with the machines in use before Mr. Arkwright's invention; it was, therefore, inevitable, that the cause should be imperfectly understood, and imperfectly stated. This is a patent granted to Mr. Arkwright, as the inventor of certain instruments or machines (in the plural number) which would be of public utility in preparing cotton, flax, and wool for spinning. The object of these machines is distinctly, described in the patent; it is not a machine for spinning any of those materials, but for preparing them for the operation of spinning. If, therefore, Mr. Arkwright has invented a way of preparing (as stated in the patent) the raw materials in a manner which shall improve our manufactures in quality, more expeditiously and with less labor, he has done an essential benefit to the public, and is entitled to derive a benefit from it himself, provided he has complied with the legal requisites; for it is necessary to secure the benefit in reversion to the public, as the law does not suffer an inventor to enjoy the benefit of an invention for any period of time, at the risque of afterwards letting the secret die with him, or wilfully concealing it; it is, therefore, required in all patents, that the nature of the invention shall be so described, as that at the expiration of the patent, other people may make use of the same thing. In what is technically called the specification, Mr. Arkwright has fully and suffi ciently described that invention. In all inventions, that in which this precaution is of the least importance to the public, and in which there is the least danger of an invention, once brought into use, being lost, is in the invention of new ingenious machines; because, from the use of them, it must necessarily happen, from their being in a number of hands, that if the inventor wished to conceal them from the public, if he had been ever so artfully obscure in his specification, in order to prevent the public getting to the knowledge of them, it would not be in his power to do so; for a machine once introduced, and in general use, can never be lost; it must, from the use and nature of it, be known at the time the patent expires. It is not, however, contended, that a plain and intelligible specification is not in every case necessary. As to a very ingenious and complicated machine, it must be plain and intelligible to ingenious mechanics, to men informed of the effect which that machine is intended to produce, and intimately acquainted with the means used to produce similar effects before; without these requisites, the ingenuity of man cannot make a plain and intelligible specification of a complicated machine. If an ingenious mechanic was to make a new invention in clocks or watches, it would not be incumbent upon him to make a specification intelligible to a common cobbler; the person must be acquainted with the construction of watches in use before; and it will be sufficient in the principles of common sense, and to satisfy the requisition of the law, if the specification is suffi cient to enable a skilful watchmaker, who knew nothing of the invention but from the specification, to add those improvements to the movements that were before in use. That will explain what was meant by saying, that the cause was not understood upon the former trial, because it was not then explained what the principles of the machines in use before this invention were; what effects they produced, and what defects this invention proposed to remedy, and what new effects it was to produce. When the machines that were in use before Mr. Arkwright's invention are produced and explained, it will be perfectly clear that any mechanic of common ingenuity, who was acquainted with those machines, could, from the drawing and the description, make the machine invented by Mr. Arkwright. There was another source of obscurity and mistake, which existed at the time of the former trial, which was, that after the granting of Mr. Arkwright's patent, both he himself, and those who had encroached upon the patent, had made several alterations in the form and construction of different parts of the machine, so that the model then produced, which was a direct model of the machine as then used in its improved state, exhibited an appearance not perfectly corresponding with the drawings in the specification. To explain that there will be produced a model of the machines in use before Mr. Arkwright's invention, then an application of the parts of that invention, made exactly after the description contained in the specification, and applied to the principles of the old machine, |