ing was effected by sending a jet of lighted gas into it, and then securing the stick on the mandrel by a strip of steel. The heat stiffened the fibres of the wood, and the curvature was rendered permanent. In a suit to restrain the defendants from infringing the patent, its validity was called in question, on the ground that the invention was not new; but Sir W. P. Wood, V. C., granted the injunction, saying, 'When it is stated that because wood is bent by coachmakers and others in a variety of ways by the application of heat, you cannot have a patent for the application of heat to the bending of walking-sticks, that is the same sort of reasoning that was pressed on the Court with reference to an invention for an improvement on navigation. It was said that the operation of a propelling power by presenting a screw-propeller to the action of water was nothing new— that it was like the action of a windmill with reference to the wind. That reasoning, however, did not succeed.' (Dangerfield v. Jones, 13 L. T. N. s. 142.)

5. Chemical processes, sometimes in combination with mechanical contrivances, whereby something useful is produced or effected. Under this head the following examples may be given the distillation of bituminous minerals for the production of illuminating and lubricating oils (Young v. Fernie, 4 Giff. 597); the purification of coal gas by means of oxides, chlorides, &c. (Hills v. London Gas Light Company, 5 H. & N. 312); the precipitation of the solid animal and vegetable matter contained in sewage water with a view to its employment as manure (Higgs v. Goodwin, E. B. & E. 529); the preparation of dyeing materials (Steiner v. Heald, 6 Exch. 607; Simpson v. Holliday, 5 N. R. 340, L. R. 1 H.L. 315; Badische Anilin und Soda Fabrik v. Levinstein, 4 R. P. C. 449); the electro-deposition of nickel (The Plating Co. v. Farquharson, 1 Griffin, P. C. 187); the manufacture of alum (Kurtz v. Spence, 5 R. P. C. 161); the mixture of two or more substances in certain definite proportions forming a compound substance useful for its preservative, sanitary, or other useful properties (Bewley v. Hancock, 6 De G. M. & G. 402; Muntz v. Foster, 2 W. P. C. 103; Bailey v. Roberton, L. R. 3 App. Ca. 1055).

Many substances have been produced by chemists in their laboratories in small quantities, which, if they could be produced in large quantities at a moderate cost, so as to be merchantable commodities, would be extensively used by the public. An inventor who succeeds in doing this will not be considered to have been forestalled because the substance has been already produced on a small scale as a chemical curiosity. He will be held to have been the true and first inventor, and his patent will be supported because he has discovered a method of making for sale an article useful to the public, and has thereby created a new manufacture. What the law looks to,' said V. C. Stuart, in the case of Young v. Fernie (4 Giff. 611), 'is the inventor1 and discoverer who finds out and introduces a manufacture which supplies the market for useful and economical purposes with an article which was previously little more than the ornament of a museum. The plaintiff is an inventor of this class, and his patent is entitled to the protection of the law. I find that he has ascertained by a course of laborious experiment a particular class of materials among many, and a particular process among many, which has enabled him to create and introduce to the public a useful manufacture, which amply supplies the market with that which, until the use of the materials and processes and temperature indicated by him, had never been supplied for commercial purposes. At the date of his patent something remained to be ascertained which was necessary for the useful application of the chemical discovery of paraffine and paraffine oil. This brings it within the principle stated by Lord Westbury, C., in the case of Hills v. Evans (4 De G. F. and J. 288). The manufacture with the materials and process indicated by him, according to the sense in which I understand the word "manufacture" to be used in the statute, was a new manufacture not in use at the date of his patent."

The inventor in this case was referred to by Professor Huxley, P.R.S., in his Anniversary Address to the Royal Society 1883, as 'Mr. James Young, a chemist whose skilful application of theory to practice yielded him a colossal fortune.'

CHAPTER III.

THE INCIDENT OF UTILITY.

THE two chief incidents which are required by law to attend every invention that claims the protection of a patent are Utility and Novelty.

If one of several heads of invention is useless the patent is void (Morgan v. Seward, 2 M. & W. 544; Simpson v. Holliday, L. R. 1 H. L. 315; Templeton v. Macfarlane, 1 H. L. C. 595). And if part of an invention is found to be meritorious and part useless, the patent is likewise void (United Horsenail Co. v. Stewart, 2 R. P. C. 132).

A patent for a useless invention is thought by some to be void at common law; by others, by force of the Statute of Monopolies, which renders void grants of privileges which tend to the hurt of trade, or are generally inconvenient. For if a monopoly were allowed in a useless invention, other persons would be prevented from improving it, or turning it to any account whatever, so that combinations of utility might be impeded. It would stand in the way of real inventors, and hence be mischievous to the public generally. (See the observations of Parke, B., in Morgan v. Seward, 1 W. P. C. 196.) On the trial of Palmer v. Wagstaff (Newton's Lond. Journ. vol. xliii. p. 151), Chief Baron Pollock said that in legal language it is a fraud on the law of patents for any person to take out a patent with a view to the obstruction of improvements. The evidence showed that the plaintiff's patent, which it was alleged the defendant had infringed, had never been worked; no attempt had been made to bring the candles of the patented construction before the public; and the patent was only then brought into play for the purpose of stopping the defendant from a course of improvement.

'A patent for an invention which is merely to obstruct every subsequent improvement, which is to step in and prevent the exercise of the ingenuity of mankind and the introduction of other inventions adapted to the particular subject to which the invention may be applicable, cannot, in my judgment, be supported.' (Per Pollock, C. B., in Crossley v. Potter; Macr. P. C. 240.)

It is to be observed that the recital in the Letters Patent of the Crown's willingness to encourage all inventions which may be for the public good' clearly points to the quality of utility as one of the considerations for the grant, which failing, the patent will be invalid.

If an invention contains no degree of usefulness whatever, over and above inventions already known, then the patent is void. (Manton v. Parker, Dav. P. C. 327; W. P. C. 192 n.; Manton v. Manton, Dav. P. C. 348.)

'A mere trifling matter' (said Sir W. P. Wood, V. C., in Dangerfield v. Jones, 13 L. T. N. s. 142) or a thing of no value will not do, inasmuch as the whole theory of the patent law is based upon the assumption that it is something of real value. You must show that you have invented something useful, a new and useful improvement in manufacture.'

It is a fatal objection to a patent that the invention as put into practice in the only way described in the specification is not only useless, but dangerous. (Easterbrook v. Great Western Railway Co., 2 R. P. C. 207.)

'In (patent) law utility means an invention better than the preceding knowlege of the trade as to a particular fabric. It does not mean abstract utility. . . . If there is any new point of utility in the invention which was not in any previous known thing, then you may say it is useful; but if you think it is not as good as those existing before, or no better than those existing before in any particular point, then you would say it was not useful.' (Mr. Justice Grove to the jury in Young v. Rosenthal, 1 R. P. C. 41.)

When an action is tried before a jury, it is for them, not the Court, to decide the question of utility when the point

has been raised by appropriate pleadings; and the question will go before them in the general shape of utility or no utility. They have not to consider to what extent the invention is useful, but only whether it is of any use at all. Mr. Baron Parke, in Neilson v. Harford (1 W. P. C. 314), speaking of a patent for the use of hot-blasts in furnaces, laid it down that if the apparatus were an improvement, so as to be productive, practically, of some beneficial result, no matter how great, provided it is sufficient to make it worth while (the expense being taken into consideration) to adapt such an apparatus to the ordinary machinery in all cases of forges, cupolas, and furnaces, where the blast is used, then that there would be utility sufficient to support the patent. The quantum of improvement (should an improvement be in dispute) is not a material point; it is enough that they can find any improvement. (Alderson, B., in Morgan v. Seward, 1 W. P. C. 172, 186.) In other words, in order to quash a patent on this ground, a jury must expressly find that the invention is of no use.

It has been decided over and over again that the slightest amount of utility is sufficient to sustain a patent. (Per Mr. Justice Grove in Philpot v. Hanbury, 2 R. P. C. 37.)

But it must be kept in mind that it is the invention which is required to possess utility, not merely the thing produced. As Pollock, C. B., remarked, on trying the case of Palmer v. Wagstaff (above cited), it is not sufficient for the maintaining of a patent to prove that the article produced under it is useful; it must be the invention that effects the utility. Thus a patented manufacture should be either better in quality, or cheaper in cost, than that which it is intended to supplant.

It was held, however, in the case of Lewis v. Marling

That the patentee must go into proof of the utility of his invention, in case that issue is raised, is shown by what fell from the judges in the cases of Rex v. Arkwright, Dav. P. C. 138; Manton v. Parker, Dav. P. C. 327 ; Manton v. Manton, Dav. P. C. 333; Bovill v. Moore, Dav. P. C. 399; Brunton v. Hawkes, 4 B. & Ald. 541; Russell v. Cowley, 1 W. P. C. 467; Hill v. Thompson, 1 W. P. C. 237; Minter v. Wells, 1 W. P. C. 129; Crane v. Price, 1 W. P. C. 411; Derosne v. Fairie, 5 Tyr. 393; 2 Cr. M. & R. 476.