Eunson v. Dodge/Opinion of the Court

This court has decided many times that the eighteenth section of the Patent Act of 1836 gives to an assignee of the patent during the original term the right to continue during the extended term the use of a machine used by him during the original term.

The complainants seek to distinguish the present from the cases cited in this manner: In those instances they say the machines were lawfully constructed by the patentees, or purchased from the patentees or their assignees, whereas the machine purchased by the defendants in this case was not a lawfully made machine, and was never purchased from the owner of the patent.

We are of the opinion that this distinction is not well taken. That the purchase of the machine was made from an infringer, and a wrong done, is true. When informed of the offence, the purchaser at once corrected the evil by purchasing the entire right of the patentees for the county where his machine was then used, and where it has since been used. This was equivalent to an original lawful purchase or manufacture of the machine. By the purchase of the right for Hudson County, and from the moment of that purchase, the defendants held and used the machine by a lawful title, as perfect and complete against the patentees as if the original purchase had been from them. They then became, in the language of the statute, 'grantees of the right to use the thing patented,' so continued to the time of the expiration of the original patent, and the right so to use was, in the further language of the statute, 'the extent of their interest therein.'

We are of the opinion that the decree of the Circuit Court was correct, and that it should be.

AFFIRMED.

Mr. Justice STRONG took no part in this judgment, not having sat in the case.