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Rh wooden beams could not be patented to connect the rails of a railway {Harwood v. Great Northern Railway Co., 1860-1865, 11 H. L. C. 654); nor can a spring long used in the rear of a carriage be patented for use in the front [Morgan v. Windover, 1890, 7 R. P. C. 131). But a small amount of invention will suffice, so long as the improvement is manifest, either as saving time or labour (Rickmann v. Thierry, 1896, 14 R.P.C. 105: Patent Exploitation, Ltd. v. Siemens & Co., 1904, 21 R.P.C. 549).

Whatever be the nature of the invention, it must possess the incidents of utihty and novelty, else any patent obtained in respect of it will be invahd. The degree of utility need not, however, be great. As to novelty, this is the rock upon which most patents split; for, if it can be shown that other persons have used or published the invention before the date of the patent, it will fall to the ground, although the patentee was an independent inventor deriving his ideas from no one else. The difficulty of steering clear of this rock will be apparent at once. Suppose A in London patents an invention the result of his own ingenuity and patient study, and it afterwards appears that B, in some distant part of the kingdom, had been previously openly using the same thing in his workshop, A's patent is good for nothing. Thus, where the patent sued on was a lock, it was proved that a similar lock had been in use on a gate adjoining a public road for sixteen years prior to the patent, which was accordingly invalidated (Carpenter v. Smith, 1842, i Web. P.C. 540). It is therefore a very frequent subject of inquiry, whether an invention has been previously used to such an extent as to have been pubUcly used in the sense attached by the courts to this phrase. But whereas " user " in public is sufficient prior publication to invalidate a subsequent patent for the invention so used, publication in books, &c., will not be a bar to novelty unless its effect is to make the invention actually a part of public knowledge; and in dealing with alleged anticipations by patents that have never come into general use the courts will not invahdate a subsequent patent unless a person of ordinary knowledge of the subject, on having the alleged anticipation brought under his notice, would at once perceive, understand, and be able practically to apply the invention without making experiments or seeking for further information. The inventor himself is not allowed to use his invention, either in public or secretly, with a view to profit, before the date of the patent. Thus, if he manufactures an article by some new process, keeping the process an entire secret, but selling the produce, he cannot afterwards obtain a patent in respect of it. If he were allowed to do this he might in many cases easily obtain a monopoly in his invention for a much longer period than that allowed by law {Morgan v. Seaward, 1837, I Web. P.C. 192). The rule that an inventor's use of the invention invalidates a subsequent patent does not, however, apply to cases where the use was only by way of experiment with a view to improve or test the invention {Elias v. Grovcsend Tinplale Co., 1890, 7 P.O.R. 466). And it has been repeatedly decided that the previous experiments of other persons, if incomplete or abandoned before the realization of the discovery, will not have the effect of vitiating a patent. Even the prior discovery of an invention will not prevent another independent discoverer from obtaining a valid patent if the earUer inventor kept the secret to himself, the law holding that he is the " true and first inventor " who first obtains a patent.

The Patents .i^ct 1883 provided that the exhibition of an invention at an industrial or international exhibition certified as such by the Board of Trade, or the publication of any description of the invention during the period of the holding of the exhibition, or its use for the purpose of the exhibition in the place where it is held, or during the period of the exhibition by any person elsewhere, without the privity or consent of the inventor, should not prejudice the right of the inventor or of his legal personal representative to apply for and obtain a patent, or the validity of any patent granted on the application, provided that two conditions are complied with, viz. {a) the exhibitor must, before exhibiting the invention, give the Comptroller-General a prescribed notice of his intention to do so; and (ft) the application for the patent must be made before or within six months from the

date of the opening of the exhibition. The Patents Act 1886, enabled the Sovereign, by order in council, to extend the provision above mentioned to industrial and international exhibitions held out of the United Kingdom. The act of 1907 re-enacted these provisions (§§ 45, 59). When an invention is the joint production of more persons than one, they must all apply for and obtain a joint patent, for a patent is rendered invalid on showing that a material part of the invention was due to some one not named therein. The mere suggestion of a workman employed by an inventor to carry out his ideas will not, however, require that he should be joined, provided that the former adds nothing substantial to the invention, but merely works out in detail the principle discovered by his employer.

Procedure. — The attributes of novelty and utility being possessed in due degree by an invention, it remains to put in motion the machinery for its protection. The Patents Act 1907, re-enacting former provisions, requires an application to be made in a prescribed form (the forms and stamps are on sale at all postal money order offices in the United Kingdom), and left at or sent by post to the patent office in the prescribed manner. The application must contain a declaration that the applicant is the true and first inventor, and it must be accompanied by either a provisional or complete specification. A provisional specification describes the nature of an invention, and a complete specification particularly describes and ascertains the nature of the invention and the manner in which it is to be performed. Since the introduction of the patent specification, it has been necessary that an invention protected by patent should be accurately described by the inventor. Formerly, when the condition on which letters patent issued was that the patentee should file a specification completely describing the nature of his invention within a certain time after the grant, the function of giving the necessary preliminary information on the subject was to some extent discharged by the title; at any rate, the validity of the grant was liable to be objected to on the ground of the title being too general. Under the present law the task of preliminary disclosure falls to the provisional specification, introduced by the Patent Law Amendment Act 1852, and continued by the Patents Acts of 1883 and 1907, although a patentee may, under the latter statutes, dispense with a provisional specification if he thinks proper to file a complete one in the first instance. Where however, these two specifications are filed, it becomes of vital moment to an inventor that the true relation between them should be maintained as defined above. The object of the provisional specification is to secure immediate protection, and to enable a patentee to work at and improve his invention without the risk of his patent being invalidated by premature publication. He is therefore entitled to embody in his complete specification any improved method of working his invention which he may discover in the interval; and he is indeed bound to do so, since, as we have said, the price that a man who desires a patent has to pay to the public for the privilege is that he should make a full disclosure of his invention in his complete specification. But there is a limit to what the patentee may do in this respect. He must not describe in his complete specification an invention different from that declared in the provisional. If he falls into this error there is said to be a " variance " or " dis conformity " between the two specifications. The Patents Act 1883, § 9, made it the duty of the examiners of the Patent Office to consider the question of dis conformity between specifications on applications for patents, but the only power the comptroller had, on discovery of dis conformity, was to refuse to accept the specification until the dis conforming parts had been eliminated. By the act of 1907, § 6, he may now refuse to accept the complete specification until it has been amended to his satisfaction, or (with the consent of the applicant) cancel the provisional specification and treat the application as having been made on the date at which the complete specification was left. Moreover, if the complete specification includes an invention not included in the provisional specification, the application may proceed as a whole, or may be divided, and the claim for the additional invention included in the complete specification be regarded as an application for that invention made on the date at which the complete specification was left. An act of 1902 (which, with the exception of a portion dealing with compulsory licences, came into operation on the 1st of Januar>' 1905) provided for an examination or search as to novelty, such investigation dealing with British complete specifications published and dated within fifty years prior to the date of the application. This search was re-enacted by the act of 1907 (§ 7) and power given to the comptroller to refuse the grant of a patent in cases in which the invention had been wholly and specifically claimed in specifications to which his search had extended.

The term for which a patent is originally granted is fourteen years, but a patentee may, after advertisement according to the rules of the Supreme Court, petition for a further term. The court, in considering its decision, takes regard of the nature and merit of the invention in relation to the public, of the profits made by